Strange Weather in Musutafu
by always-this-serious
Summary: After a call from the local hospital, Aizawa Shouta finds himself becoming awkwardly and poignantly entangled in the life of a former student.
1. The Gunshout Wound

Chapter 1  
The Gunshot Wound

It didn't surprise Aizawa that he remembered Hiruma Rin – frankly, he remembered most of the students from his first year as a teacher. Even the more unspectacular ones. What did surprise him though, was the fact that he was apparently the only emergency contact listed in Rin's hospital file. Or rather, that he was _still _the only emergency contact, even after such a considerable number of years.

As one of his first ever homeroom students, Aizawa had had no particular feelings towards Rin. She'd always gotten acceptable marks, was a hard enough worker from what Aizawa remembered. However, she'd apparently struggled to form close relationships with the other students and had no relatives anywhere near the school. Which was why Aizawa had offered his name and number as the emergency contact in any situation requiring it. Including hospital visits, of which there had been many in the three years he'd taught her.

Since then, however, he'd heard very little of Rin. In one cursory letter that had come sometime after her graduation, she'd said she'd gone on to become an underground hero by the name of Lady Chi. She liked it. Was working with a group who went after drug lords and child trafficking rings. She hoped he was well. Nothing else besides that.

Nothing. No news and no emergency calls.

Not until earlier that day, when Aizawa's lesson had been interrupted by a call from the local hospital.

Hiruma Rin had been shot. She was stable, but had lost a lot of blood – her quirk would be affected.

Now, in a clinical walling of white and machinery, Aizawa considered the oddly familiar face of his former student. Connected to IVs and a chest tube. Disconcertingly still, breathing with steady slowness while she slept. She looked pasty and worn: the mass of white hair tangled in messy knots, her face bloodless and damp. Such sickly pallor was a feature Aizawa recognised without shock, along with the nearly bruise-like darkness surrounding her lids and the sharp angling of her cheekbones. Apart from some new maturity in her features, Rin hadn't changed much.

At her bedside, the doctor explained things simply. Rin had been after an escaped convict two nights ago and things had gone awry. She hadn't managed to catch him, taking a nasty shot to the chest instead, after which she was brought to the hospital by the police. Fortunately, apart from some tissue damage, no harm had been done to her vital organs – though it had been a close call. She'd been given a blood transfusion. Several stitches.

"Considering the nature of Miss Hiruma's wound, it seems unlikely that she'll be able to resume hero work for a while."

"Quite unfortunate," Aizawa droned in turn. He glanced back to Rin for a moment with a dull sense of the impersonal – a former student, older now and seemingly very much the same as she always had been; however, it was also very much like looking at a stranger. Of course, Aizawa was concerned, but it was the type of concern one would have for a thirsty houseplant.

The doctor nodded, tapping a pen against the clipboard he held. A pause of little meaning passed between them before he spoke again, more hesitantly this time, "Miss Hiruma is going to require a lot of rest as part of her recovery. Possibly someone to help oversee her care. Are you a relative of hers, Eraser Head?"

"No. I'm not a relative."

"I see," the doctor murmured, eying out his clipboard once more. "You were the only person listed as an emergency contact."

Aizawa stared. "So I've been told."

"Are you aware of anyone else we might be able to get in contact with regarding Miss Hiruma's circumstances?"

No relatives. No friends from high school he could remember. There were the other underground heroes, of course – though Aizawa hadn't exactly made friendly chit-chat with any of them for quite some time. He wouldn't know who to suggest on that front. "Unfortunately," he said to the doctor with impending uneasiness, "There's no one I can think of."

The doctor stared skeptically, as though to question Aizawa's status as this poor girl's only saving grace. "_I see_," he hummed.

Another pause, this one much more potent than the last, weighed heavily by looming expectation. It had been suggested over the phone that Rin would need some sort of assistance in her recovery. That someone would have to be there for her. The implications had been clear – and Aizawa, in his rush for the hospital, had reasoned that it would be easy enough to discourage it. Only now, faced with the actuality of the possibility, he wasn't so sure he'd be able to bring himself to do so. Not if he was the only person to whom Rin had any apparent connection.

In low tones, seeming to speak less to Aizawa than to himself, the doctor began again, "I'll have to ask Miss Hiruma for some more information when she wakes up. It'll be much easier for her if there's someone to help her out when she–"

"She can stay with me."

A wide-eyed stare. "Pardon?"

"Hiruma Rin can stay with me when she's discharged," Aizawa repeated. Of course though, she wouldn't exactly be staying _with _him – not in the UA dormitories. However, his apartment wasn't far from the school: if it really came to it, Rin could stay there until she was ready to do things on her own again.

Bringing the pen to his lips in a thoughtful gesture, the doctor considered Aizawa seriously. "While it would be ideal to have someone keeping an eye out for her, you're under no obligation to take Miss Hiruma in. Alternative plans can be made."

"It would be the most rational thing," Aizawa said. "That is, if there's no one else who'd be able to help care for her instead."

Without offering any further hint at objection, the doctor thanked Aizawa and said they would be in contact. He expected Rin would have to remain hospitalized for another three days or so to be monitored; when she was discharged, Aizawa would be given the run-down of medications and any other requirements for her care. The doctor assured him it wouldn't be anything serious – things like helping out with the occasional errand and making sure she was following her treatment plan. This last detail was mentioned with particular emphasis as, apparently, Rin was a frequent visitor to the hospital and had made herself known for not following doctors' orders.

That evening, Aizawa left the hospital with a peculiar knot in his stomach. Apart from the odd biographical detail and some knowledge of Rin's quirk, Aizawa knew very little about her. Shamefully little, as a matter of fact, and it was hard to say whether he had made the right call by offering his help. His help – his apartment – his _presence_. Already, he had a rowdy group of second years to be responsible for. Now too, he (possibly) had an invalid.


	2. Houseplants & A Rice Cake

**A/N: _And so it has begun! _Thank you to those of you who have already followed and favourited - hope this story does not disappoint! Please feel free to make my day by leaving a little review~*  
**

Chapter 2  
Houseplants & A Rice Cake

The three days passed, and it was only on the morning of the third that Aizawa heard from the hospital again. Rin would be discharged that afternoon – they'd managed to contact her grandmother, who resided in Miyazaki, but the woman's health prevented her from travelling to Musutafu to care for Rin – was Aizawa still willing to assume that responsibility? Would he be able to fetch her from the hospital? Yes, he would be there when his lessons were over. And that was that.

Only when he left the school that day did it occur to him that he should at least have done some tidying around his apartment. Despite being hardly lived-in nowadays, it had continued to remain cluttered with old newspapers and folders and books, and was generally unwelcoming. There wasn't much light. Probably a lot of dust. However, the dishes had at least been washed the last time Aizawa was there.

A thought on the topic of dishes – apart from a few beers and potentially a block of cheese, the fridge would be empty. There may have been some sort of ready-made meal in the freezer, but the thought was bland and unappetizing, and Aizawa resolved to give Rin money for pizza or something that evening. He'd get real food over the weekend.

All through his drive to the hospital, Aizawa considered such peculiarities of his domestic ineptitude. Unwashed and unused bedding. Boxes still unopened from when he'd moved into the apartment three years ago. Beyond a single bottle of dish soap, he didn't own any vague semblance of a cleaning product. It all amounted to an irksome sense of uncleanliness, and when Aizawa eventually entered into the hospital waiting room – its floor shiny and waxed, the white walls hung with clinical landscapes – he felt an uncharacteristic need to scrub himself.

An old woman was at the reception desk, typing busily as she glanced between her computer screen and an array of open folders. When Aizawa came to the counter, she looked up at him, gave a smile quite unsuited to the rush hour bustle. "How can I help you?"

"I'm here for Hiruma Rin."

Nodding, the old woman turned her attention back to her paperwork. "Name, please."

"Aizawa Shouta."

"Ah, lovely." She placed a clipboard and pen on the counter. "If you would please fill in your details, then sign here and here. Are you a relative, Aizawa-san?"

Doing as instructed, scrawling down the usual sorts of information, Aizawa shook his head blandly. "No," he said. "Just an old teacher."

"Rin-chan has been very excited to see you."

To this, under her hospitable smile, Aizawa gave no response. He scribbled his signature onto the bottom of the page, followed the old woman's directive as she pointed out where Rin was waiting. Just around the corner. By the television. Couldn't miss her – couldn't miss her, except for the fact Rin was a girl so white she nearly blended into the walls.

At first, Rin seemed unaware of Aizawa as he approached, eyes locked up and onto the TV screen as it showed the afternoon news. She chewed through a packet of dried fruit; had her legs drawn up to her chest in a compact and curled position like a child. Grey pajamas spotted by white. Long-limbed and looking shapeless beneath the material. Rin was rubbing her shin in an absent-minded daze, thoroughly absorbed by the soundless news channel. Indeed, Aizawa recognised her immediately – such insipid paleness and airheaded fascination – but was once again struck by the paradoxical sense of looking at a stranger. There was little familiarity in approaching her, like two people who had only passed by in trivial meeting, and when Aizawa called her name over the short distance it was lacking in warmth.

"Hiruma."

Wide eyes, darkly shadowed by sleeplessness, turned towards him. For some moments, Rin stared – a ghost, one easily spooked. She blinked once, twice again, and then unfolded her legs from her body to stand, seeming unsure of herself. "_Aizawa-sensei_…" she said, voice hoarse, and quickly cleared her throat. "It's nice to see you."

Under the gloomy hospital light, she looked more sickly than injured.

Aizawa came close. Close enough to see the languid heaviness about her features, from which the teenage softness had vanished to be replaced by a more angular maturity. "How are you feeling?"

"Tired."

"Any pain?"

"They've given me painkillers."

"Good."

Silence. On the seat next to where Rin had been sitting, there was a canvas bag – containing medicine? Small, personal belongings? – and the half-eaten packet of dried fruit. Peaches. Or apricots. Dull orange and wrinkled. Aizawa eyed these items, reminding himself that his apartment was a barren wasteland and that he would buy Rin more dried fruit when he eventually went for groceries.

Shifting her weight, Rin glanced away from Aizawa. "I'm really sorry about this, sensei," she murmured. "The doctors are overreacting. I'll be fine to stay on my own."

Aizawa raised an eyebrow at her. "Is there someone staying with you? A roommate?"

"No," Rin said. "But it's–"

"Then it'll be better this way." Turning, Aizawa gestured to the bag on the seat. "Is that all you have with you?"

There was some sense of hesitation as Rin looked to the bag and the dried fruit. She picked them up – the glassy clink of what was assumedly medicine bottles chiming as she did so – and gave a curt nod of confirmation. The bag and the flimsy slippers on her feet. All she had. Silvery white hair clearly having gone unwashed for some time, up in a slick ponytail which tried and failed to be neat, Aizawa assumed Rin would probably want to shower at the earliest opportunity. He wasn't sure where she lived, but it surely wouldn't be too far out of the way. They'd stop there for clothes, whatever toiletries she might need. Maybe also buy dinner.

* * *

An uninteresting building near the train station, something of a city lodge in which Rin rented an apartment of her own. Aizawa would have waited for her in the car – would have left her to clean up and pack and go about her business without him hanging around – except the doctor had informed him in their earlier phone call that Rin shouldn't lift heavy things. Like overnight bags filled with much more than one night's clothing. As such, Aizawa followed her into the building's elevator. Up to the fourth floor.

"There's beer in the fridge, if you want some while you wait," Rin said into the silence, over the aged _ting _of the elevator as the doors slid open. "Or wine."

They stepped out into the hallway and Aizawa shot her a look. "I'm driving."

An awkward pause. "Oh. Yes. Right." And then Rin began a hurried walk around the corner.

Surprisingly, her place was just as much a stewing mess as Aizawa's was, though perhaps with a touch more of the cultured temperament. A small, cramped space, in which books lacking shelves were piled in precarious towers along the walls and which was in scant possession of furniture. A couch was shoved awkwardly in one corner. A series of mismatched chairs, one of which was hung with a blanket, sat facing all directions except toward the small table to which they assumedly belonged. The table itself was strewn with a tremendous spread of papers in no apparent order. A single wine glass, half-full with dark red, on the coffee table. Some drawings framed and hanging. Venturing deeper into the unfamiliar domain, Aizawa recognised the faintly mingled scent of laundry detergent, perfume and… something else. An undertone of something more metallic. Like rust.

And amongst it all, houseplants. Enough for the whole building.

"Do you want anything, sensei?" Rin questioned in the same, chokedly polite tone as one would offer an unwelcome guest. "To drink, I mean. Or to eat, if you're hungry."

"I'm fine. Just go get cleaned up and pack whatever you'll need. I'd like to be back at UA before it gets dark."

Rin eyed Aizawa seriously, underscored by the twist of an unuttered question. "The doctor never told me how long I'll be staying with you," she said.

"A while, I'd imagine."

Not seeming entirely satisfied with the answer but posing no further discussion, Rin disappeared through into an unseen bedroom and closed the door behind her. Aizawa listened for some moments to the opening and shutting of cupboard doors, hearing Rin sporadically mutter things to herself. Shuffling. Unidentifiable scrapings. And then the warm hiss of a shower being run – it was necessary to remove a wound's dressing before a shower, more important was not to soak the wound itself. Aizawa hoped Rin paid attention to that part of her care on her own.

In the meantime, Aizawa trailed his eyes along the various spines of her books. Hardbacks on introductory psychology – _Childhood and Adolescent Development_; _Understanding Abnormal Behaviour, 12__th__ Edition_; _Psychology of Human Sexuality _– and some medical anthologies. Classic literature. More on children's psychology. _The Big Book of Blood. _Cook books – _Iron-Rich Recipes _and _Cooking for Blood Health_. Criminology. Semiotics. More on sexuality. More on blood. All thrown together in a jumble without the slightest attempt at being alphabetized or colour-coded. And atop the lower piles there would inevitably be the richly cultivated houseplant, the only type of which Aizawa recognised was an ivy and an aloe.

There were houseplants with waved, rubbery leaves on the windowsill. Houseplants that looked almost purple in more shielded corners. Houseplants like enormous fans and houseplants like cascading waterfalls. Mostly without flowers, though there was a spoon-shaped sort of lily near the coffee table.

The shower stopped; through the walls, Aizawa could vaguely hear the scrape of a curtain rail. The wet tap of feet on tile.

The drawings on the walls looked to be originals. Faceless bodies, whose nakedness were dramatically articulated in black and white smudges. Bodiless half-faces: brooding eyes and wistful mouths. Incomplete, as though fading out into the unshaded oblivion of paper, and quite extraordinary. Each of which was signed with Rin's name – her handwriting unchanged since high school, though perhaps slightly smaller – in the bottom left corner. At these, Aizawa only looked fleetingly, though not without a certain amount of interest.

He took the wine glass from the coffee table. Wandered through to Rin's kitchen which, unlike the rest of the apartment, was pristine. A stack of clean dishes lay in the drying rack. A bowl of citrusy fruits near the fridge, along with an uncorked bottle of merlot and an open packet of rice cakes, like some arb idea of a still-life painting.

Aizawa rinsed the glass in hand with hot water and set it aside with the other dishes. He recorked the bottle, tied a knot in the rice cake packet. Then, shamelessly – after all, Rin _had _offered him something to drink or eat – he swiped a satsuma from the fruit bowl.

* * *

"I'm ready," Rin declared, emerging from her bedroom with a scented aura of fruity shampoo.

It had been half an hour. Aizawa had just begun to page through the selection of papers across her dining room table – which, from what he had gathered, were mostly police reports and newspaper articles amongst scrawled out notes. When he looked up, he found Rin gazing at him from the bedroom door. Hair wet and in a haphazard bun, drowning in a pale green turtleneck, she looked ever so slightly more human with a post-shower flush across her cheeks.

At her side were two immense suitcases. Nestled in the crook of her arm was a laptop.

"Did you change the dressing on your wound?" Aizawa questioned, resisting the urge to gawk at the size of the bags.

Rin raised an eyebrow at him. "Yes, sensei."

"And you've got whatever medicines were given to you?"

She pouted. "You don't have to baby me. I have everything."

"Good. Then let's go."

From Rin, Aizawa took the bags and nearly threw out his shoulder. He questioned such ridiculous heaviness, to which she blushed and apologised but didn't give any specific answer about the suitcases' contents. They made for the door – Rin double-checked that all the plugs were turned off and that she had no disposable food in the fridge. In a decidedly last-minute moment of charmed consideration, she hurried to browse her book piles one last time, made a few selections and deselections while Aizawa waited in the corridor, watching her. White skirt that floated about her legs. Wooly sweater. An unusual character for an underground hero.

With three intimidatingly sized volumes held tightly with the laptop, Rin breezed through into the kitchen. Aizawa moaned. "Move it!"

"Sorry! _Sorry_!"

She was quick to reemerge, clutching the packet of rice cakes in her free hand.


	3. Closed

Chapter 3  
Closed

In the silence of the car ride – a silence punctuated emphatically by the crunch of Rin chewing on rice cakes – there was a recurring theme to Aizawa's thoughts. He had wondered about it at the hospital, though by an inexplicable sense of significance hadn't wondered aloud, and continued to do so now with something akin to puzzlement. Such a feeling swelled the longer he was in Rin's presence, her face leaning close to the passenger window and her legs crossed beneath the white folds of her skirt: a spectral image of near-ghostly stillness.

There'd been mention of it over the phone. Brief and vague. A disconcerting undertone. _Complications_, the doctor had said. _There have been complications with Miss Hiruma's agency. We are unable to reach out to them at the moment. _Aizawa would be contacted with more information as soon as it became available.

Fresh out of the hospital, likely having spoken enough about the whole incident with the police, it seemed the gentler thing not to probe Rin about it. Aizawa even considered the possibility that she'd be as ignorant as he was. Of course though, that was unlikely; and driven by the more curious side of his rationality, reasoning that certainty would be better suited to their situation than having to pointlessly rack his brains, Aizawa angled his head ever so slightly towards his passenger. "There's something I've been thinking about," he said.

To which Rin straightened in her seat, no particular emotion about her features as she looked to him in return.

They pulled up at a red light. Outside, the afternoon had melted into an orange-tinged evening, and the warm colours fell against Rin to make her look almost vampiric. Like ivory in candlelight.

She said nothing, and Aizawa broached the subject, "The agency you work for…" Out the corner of his eye, he watched for a reaction, waited for her to respond. When once again she offered nothing in the way of words, he spoke further, "Even without being contacted by the hospital, they should have been aware of what happened at the crime scene. That you were injured."

"They should have been," Rin agreed, voice an ambiguous monotone.

Traffic light still red, Aizawa turned himself more fully towards her. "But no one has reached out."

"No."

"Why not?"

Silence. A pregnant hush.

Aizawa repeated his question, and Rin lifted a half-eaten rice cake to her lips. "Because the agency's gone."

Gone. It evoked images of mysterious vanishings and desperate searches. Phantoms. Illusions. There one moment, gone the next. Narrowing his eyes, gradually accelerating as the traffic light turned green, Aizawa wrapped his tongue around the word. "What do you mean 'gone'?" he insisted.

"I mean _gone_. It was dissolved," Rin said, tapping the snack against her mouth without any apparent intent to eat it. She clicked her fingers. "Just like that."

An entire agency couldn't dissolve _just like that_.

"The police are investigating," Rin continued with a sweet hum. "But for now, my hero license has been suspended."

"Are _you _under investigation?" Aizawa posed, the question sounding darker than he'd intended.

Taking a bite of her rice cake at last, Rin seemed to contemplate the situation. Crunching slowly, the sound of it dry and bland and wholly non-nutritive. When she swallowed, Aizawa could see her shrug deftly. "Everyone at the agency would be investigated after something like this," she said. "In my case though, Detective Tsukauchi says it's mainly to clear my name. Which shouldn't be difficult. Apparently."

"Apparently?" Aizawa raised an eyebrow.

In response, Rin offered a smile. "Apparently."

A smile, of all things. Surprising, indeed, though thin and uncertain. Even so – considering the circumstances, Rin appeared marvelously unruffled. Perhaps it was because of the lulling softness with which she spoke. Or perhaps it had more to do with an obvious talent for being distantly abstract. There was much more she could've said to him. Aizawa knew it – he saw it in the subtle ways she'd angled herself away from him, as well as in the carefully considered balance of her words.

Nonetheless, despite her dubiously closed manner – one easy to misplace, owing to her more obvious air of distracted gentleness – Aizawa believed her. That it would be easy to clear her name. That, by implication, she wasn't involved in something suspicious and he wouldn't be inviting trouble into his apartment. Still, he couldn't shake an inkling apprehension about one particular detail. Something which in any other circumstances probably wouldn't have been all that important, but now seemed to be crucial.

"I have one more question," Aizawa said slowly.

"Mmm?"

Rounding the corner to his building, keeping his eyes locked on the parking spot across the street, Aizawa felt a nagging constriction in his gut. "Which agency do you work for?"

The placid wall, if only for a moment, wavered. Subtle but distinct, like a sharp needle piercing the veil. There was a crackling of some sort – Aizawa, glancing down to the source of the noise, noticed Rin's fingers picking away at the delicate body of the rice cake.

She answered calmly, quite the same as before, only now with a new and nearly imperceptible reserve, "I worked for Doctor Voodoo."

Despite the name, Doctor Voodoo was neither a particularly dark nor a particularly mysterious character – on the contrary, he was perhaps one of the more approachable pros in the underground: overwhelmingly loud and forever flaunting a large mosaic of teeth. Frankly, Rin said his name and it irritated Aizawa immediately. Rather the same way as Miss Joke irritated him. However, unlike with Miss Joke, Aizawa had half a mind to stomach Doctor Voodoo's more colourful nature. His overfamiliarity and clownish delight at everything. The specific line of work he involved himself in demanded it.

Doctor Voodoo worked with kids.

Very young kids.

And often times, very vulnerable kids.

Apart from frail attempts at understanding though, Aizawa had always had little patience for the bright likes of Doctor Voodoo – and now, faced with the mysterious closure (or rather, disappearance) of the Voodoo Agency, Aizawa found himself stumped by several things. First of all, _how_: agencies didn't just spontaneously dissolve, and even if they did it wouldn't be overnight. Too many loose ends for that. Secondly, the ever-evasive _why_. An act of defense – perhaps, for example, the agency was being targeted by a powerful enemy – or something else entirely. No way to know. Third, and perhaps most of all, why Rin had suddenly choked herself into an impenetrable silence.

It was hard to say what exactly stirred the sour burn in Aizawa's mouth. There was nothing immediately sinister about the situation, and a lot could probably be put down to coincidence. Either way, for both his sake and Rin's, Aizawa said nothing more on the matter. At least, not for the moment.


	4. Apartment

**A/N: An enormous thank you to those who have left more reviews for me to enjoy and consider! As usual, hope this next chapter is a goodie. xxx**

Chapter 4  
Apartment

"It's not much," Aizawa said, opening the door. "Just excuse the mess."

Next to him, Rin cast her eyes over the apartment. She glanced to Aizawa, and he looked at her – which, with curious indolence, made her look away again. A sharp breath. Rin shifted her weight, saying quietly, "It's nice, sensei."

While not embarrassed by the state of his apartment, which was indeed a mess as well as being lackluster – no art on the walls, no hint of any cultured or even bohemian order to the disorder – Aizawa was more thrown by how out-of-place Rin looked amongst it all. Soft and airy in her oversized clothes, likely more at home in between the high shelves of an antique store on a rainy day than in such musty accommodation. It was akin to seeing a deer in the middle of a city.

While Aizawa lugged her suitcases into the cramped entranceway, Rin wandered forth slowly.

She gazed with intent interest, though at what in particular, it was hard to say. Perhaps the few scattered books which lay here and there; or perhaps the beaten furniture flanked by boxes, some open, others not. The coat strewn across the couch. The empty mugs Aizawa had obviously forgotten on the coffee table. At the sight of it all, he became irksomely aware of the emptiness of the space. Emptiness, indeed – despite being encumbered by trash he cared nothing for, there was a lifelessness that made the apartment feel cold.

On top of which, watching Rin was to be struck once again by that contradictory sense of strangeness.

Granted, Aizawa hadn't been the most attentive teacher at the start of his career nor had Rin been the most outstanding student – however, it seemed wrong that he saw her now through such a foreign lens, as though she were someone he'd only met in trivial passing. A numbered face amongst faces, once-observed and then promptly dismissed.

To think of it though, it wasn't as if Aizawa had been _completely _unmindful of Rin in her student days. On a few occasions, which must have been around the time of summer vacations or report cards, he'd asked Principal Nezu about her. _A smart girl! _Nezu would always say with enthusiasm, followed by vague references to 'challenging family circumstances' which were 'unsuited to her potential'. It was largely for this reason – these unspecified 'family circumstances' combined with a delicate stringency in training her quirk – that Rin had been a scholarship student.

However, even through such attempts, whatever information was to be gained on Rin was insubstantial and ambiguous, and Aizawa was therefore unsurprised that he knew so little about her. In a way, she was shrouded in retrospective mystery. Enough so that when she turned to face him, smiling a sweet and reflective smile, it was almost jolting.

"Do you have a cat?" Rin tilted her head, a hint of subdued excitement in her voice.

Aizawa raised his eyebrows. Rather suspicious, that she should know he was a cat-person. "What makes you think that?"

"You have a lot of cat magazines…"

The question had disconcerted him – like an intrusion, some unwelcome sense of foreboding at the idea of this unfamiliar girl knowing such things – but now it was just embarrassing. Resisting the urge to run his hand down his face, Aizawa sighed. "I meant to throw those away."

"Why?"

"It was my intention to get a cat. But plans changed."

"I see." A pause, in which Rin leaned forward to take one such magazine from the coffee table. She eyed its cover, a thoughtful expression curling into her features, and then said in such a way that she didn't quite seem to be speaking to Aizawa himself: "I like cats too."

"Is that so?"

Rin hummed. "My grandparents used to have a Bombay cat named Blink."

"An interesting name."

Once again, Rin gave an absent-minded smile as she began to page through the magazine, obviously paying no attention to its contents. "Yes. _Interesting_," she murmured. Then, with a sudden snapping movement, she returned her attention to Aizawa. "Thank you for doing this, sensei. I know I said I would be fine on my own, but I appreciate that you're willing to…" she paused, considered her words. _Willing to look out for me. Willing to take care of me_. "…that you're letting me stay here."

To which Aizawa said quickly, "It's nothing." Feeling around his pockets for his wallet, revealing it with anxious care – by now it was dark outside, and he began to feel an itching need to be getting back to the dormitories before someone in Class 2A burned down the buildings – he pulled out a few notes and moved to hand them to Rin. "There's nothing to eat around here. Order yourself something. I will buy whatever else you need when I come back this weekend."

The smile vanished from Rin's face, lips falling into a thin and pale line. She lowered her eyes to the money Aizawa held towards her, then back up again. "You're leaving?"

"I have to get back to my students–" For the first time, Aizawa realised that she probably hadn't heard about the new rooming system at the school; and, also for the first time, he felt half a sense of guilt in the face of what looked to be a young woman's disappointment. Steeling himself, Aizawa rubbed his palm against the back of his neck. "I'm responsible for the second year dormitory during the week," he said. "But I'll be back tomorrow evening."

Rin nodded gently. "I see."

"In the meantime though," Aizawa gestured for her to take the money, "use this to–"

Rin's nod turned to a shake of her head. "You don't have to do that, sensei. I still have rice cakes that I can eat."

Rice cakes - such bland, chewy crunching which fell through the body like air. More cardboard than food.

"Don't be ridiculous," Aizawa said.

"Rice cakes are delicious."

"Just take the money, Hiruma."

The narrow line of her lips fell into something of a pout. Yielding with a certain amount of hesitation, Rin did as she was told and Aizawa continued on with last minute business. He wrote down his number on a stray piece of paper, for if she needed anything, and pointed out the more important aspects of the apartment. The shower leaked if the water ran for too long. There was a loud and vexing neighbour down the hall. Rin was welcome to sleep in the bed, use the TV, do whatever she liked within the implicit bounds of reason. And all the while, she listened without really seeming to listen.

A spare set of keys was in one of the bedside tables. Aizawa, recognizing the absurdity of handing them over to someone nearly a stranger and yet feeling no apprehension in doing so, gave them to Rin as they said goodbye at the door. "Phone any time," he said. "And do exactly what the doctors have told you to."

Rin was silent in the doorway for some moments, seeming to chew on his words, and Aizawa considered leaving without further ado. However, before he could do so, he noticed Rin's fingers float with pensive inattention towards her chest. She narrowed her eyes – which, Aizawa noticed, were a disconcertingly pale shade of green. "Sensei. Before you go…" she uttered, an odd gravity in her voice. "Do you only come back to your apartment over weekends?"

"Generally," Aizawa replied. "Why?"

"Just wondering." And something told Aizawa – something in the way she tapped her fingers against her forearm, and how she stared at him through a hazily ponderous gaze – that Rin was doing more than 'just wondering'. Even when she smiled once again, tilting her head at him in an endearing gesture, something was off. Nothing nefarious. More like a slithering anxiety.

"Have a nice evening, Aizawa-sensei," she said in the same pastel tones as before. "Thank you for everything."

"Don't mention it."


	5. The Letters

Chapter 5  
The Letters

_There was once a letter I wrote you – a letter and not a phone call or an email, because paper is easier to burn. Better to destroy. And I'd considered destroying it, because you'd never know if I did. _

_So I wrote the letter. I wrote one and two and five letters, trying hard to explain the things school essays couldn't. To say anything at all after all the years: questions; a thank you. All of it flimsy and false, like bloodless lips sucking at bones. It was hard to explain, these things like ghosts in my chest. Hammering, soaked in red. Hazy in ways I couldn't begin to understand, within the mind of a child and a body like a halfway house. _

_Do you remember, sensei? I sent a letter that ended up saying nothing at all._

_And you replied with the same black ink, the same white paper. Saying even less. Simple words I kept and keep in secret boxes with other essential things. An anchor, locked away. Hidden for the days when everything feels a little too dark or adrift. When my self-made mystery feels rather too much like collapsing organs and entropy. Those days, I remember you. _

_You don't know it, nor have I ever had the words to grasp the feeling. Safe. Real. A little less lost. _

_I don't think you realised it. _

_Don't you remember, sensei? _


	6. Misplaced Concerns

Chapter 6  
Misplaced Concerns

From his return to the dorms the previous evening all through to the end of the school day, Aizawa's mind had been elsewhere. Full of pessimistic speculation and unwieldy unease.

Now too in the staff meeting, which dragged by as though the weekend wasn't pleasantly looming before them, he found himself adding little to the conversation, even going so far as to pay no attention at all. Poor form, he knew – but as far as discussions about new staff members or about the state of the school gardens went, it wasn't as though he had any particularly important role to play anyway.

Besides which, at that point in time, his negligence in other matters seemed to be rather more pressing.

One of the recurring themes in Aizawa's life was seeing too many people take home stray cats without any real intention of properly caring for them. Cats could live for up to twenty years. Cats needed neutering and shots, and were lactose intolerant (despite popular opinion). Most people who picked up kittens from the street ended up doing a poor job of following through with what they started, ill-prepared and indulgent despite their good intentions.

And much like it was with stray cats, Aizawa had abandoned Rin: had left her to fend for herself in a completely foreign apartment. His own slackness, almost hypocritical in a way, was disconcerting. Right now, Rin could have been passed out across the kitchen floor, or may have been bleeding out in the bathtub. Her wound could have split open. She could have been choking on her own blood behind long-unopened windows and specters of dust.

There were any number of possibilities which Aizawa had been commissioned to prevent. For which he himself had volunteered by some unspoken sense of responsibility.

And yet, here he was: in a staff meeting, having left Rin alone for nearly twenty-four hours. She could already have been dead and he wouldn't have known any better.

Of course, Aizawa had never been one to overthink things – such fatalistic possibilities were hazed by the impersonality of the hypothetical, and he found himself more bothered by the simple fact that he'd shirked his duties. Duties which were self-imposed; duties which he'd been under no obligation to accept in the first place.

Rin had obviously also had a different idea of how things would work; her face, angular and shadowed, had dropped into something of a muted displeasure when he'd left the apartment the previous evening – and inexplicably, that look had ghosted itself through Aizawa's mind several times since then. The curiously thrown undercurrents in her voice. The way she'd touched at her wound with absent-minded hesitation. All miniscule and insignificant, yet managing to leave Aizawa thoroughly unsettled.

Which was why, at the end of the staff meeting, he was in a hurry to get back to her.

He made his way through the hallways, which by now were largely deserted and dim in the disappearing daylight. Leaves turned red and brown outside. It was possible to hear the slightest hum of traffic from somewhere far off. Amongst it all, there was a golden melancholy to the evening – a comfortable lethargy so typical of autumn. Days retiring. Crisp winds, precariously balanced between warm and cool.

Listening to the rhythmic tap of his steps, Aizawa took his phone from his pocket. _17:08_. With three messages from a number he didn't know.

_Hello sensei! I hope you had a nice day. Do you eat chickpeas? _

Followed by _and broccoli? _

Followed by _From Rin :)_

Three messages. Sent two hours ago. Pausing in his walk, staring at the screen incredulously, Aizawa sighed. A lot could happen in two hours. His phone mysteriously having switched itself to silent – piece of shit technology with a mind of its own – having missed three messages from Rin, he was failing incredibly in his caretaking duties. This time she was asking him about chickpeas and broccoli – which was weird, and neither of which Aizawa had ever eaten – but what if next time she was telling him she'd fainted or had cut herself or was busy dying? If he were only to read those messages two hours after the fact…

"Ey! Aizawa!" A shrill, familiar voice. "Why so glum?"

There was no time for this. Returning the phone to the safety of his pocket, not bothering to turn around, Aizawa rolled his eyes. "I've told you before. It's just my face."

Yamada flounced up next to him, smacking his shoulder with irksome and unwarranted spirit. This was the way things went, and by now Aizawa should have been used to it – however, knowing what was coming, not wanting to entertain Yamada's unholy boisterousness today of all days, he felt himself shudder.

"_C'mon_," Yamada whined. "Even _you _should try smile a little on Fridays."

Aizawa stared. "Do you need something?"

"Actually, yes! It's still a few hours before I need to be at the radio station. Wanna grab a couple drinks? Maybe a bite to eat?"

Half-tempting. Especially the drinks – a beer would have gone down well. Nonetheless, feeling no less urgency to return to his apartment, Aizawa shook his head. "There're some things I need to be taking care of," he said. "Maybe next time."

At this, Yamada raised his eyebrows behind his glasses. "Oh? What kind of things?"

"Personal business."

"Personal, as in work personal…" A suggestive smirk. "Or _personal _personal?"

There it was: the unholy boisterousness. With a grunt, catching Yamada's drift but deliberately choosing to ignore it, Aizawa replied, "Both, I guess."

* * *

The apartment was little over a ten minutes away, and when Aizawa arrived at the door he was immediately relieved. Lulled by the dulling evening and the domestic scenery – smells of cooking, muffled conversation rising through windows. While Aizawa wouldn't necessarily call it home, even after three years, it was familiar enough to be pleasant. Decent enough for locking oneself away from the world or for spending some days away from Class 2A. Thus, it afforded a certain sense of ease whenever Aizawa stepped inside at the end of the week.

At first, after opening the door, he noticed the spiced smell of chili and garlic. Strange and initially affronting, foregrounded against the usual smells of dust and Aizawa's own particular scents. Something like a curry, he guessed, combined with a more subtle undertone of fruity shampoo.

There was also the sound of the news on TV.

And Rin on the couch, legs drawn up to her chest and tucked beneath a faded, pink sweater. A soft-coloured ball. Comfortably balanced between a make-shift wall of pillows. For some moments, she and Aizawa stared at each other as though one of them were in the wrong place. Her hair, a white cloud around her face, was messy – messy enough to assume she'd just woken up from an afternoon nap. Or even from a much heavier sleep, judging by the deepened darkness of the circles around her eyes.

"Sensei!" Rin grinned, unwrapping her legs from her sweater to stand. "I thought you were going to be back later than this."

Contrary to her woolen top, she wore a grey pair of shorts, from which there extended long and bandy legs – paler still than her face, a shade of white Aizawa hadn't thought existed. A carved litheness, so unlike the flimsily thin-limbed teenager Aizawa remembered.

Her statement going unnoticed, Aizawa turned his attention once again to the smell of curry. "Are you cooking something?" he questioned.

Rin nodded.

To which Aizawa raised an eyebrow. "Where did you get the ingredients?"

"I did some grocery shopping this afternoon."

"I said I would do that."

"I know, but I wanted to – you know – as a thank you." Rin brought her fingers together, tapping them in fidgeting coyness. "Obviously you don't have to eat it, but I'm making a chickpea and broccoli curry. It's one of my favourites." Watching Aizawa with a gossamer air of expectancy, she paused for a moment before adding, "There's bacon in it."

He did like bacon.

At the gesture, Aizawa sighed. "Did you at least get yourself something to eat last night?"

"Uh–" A slight blush appeared across Rin's cheeks as she looked down to her fingers, saying nothing – and in her silence, saying everything. She tilted her head from side to side. Gave a curious little hum. "No."

"No?"

"Yes? No?"

Fantastic. Simply fantastic. Aizawa had left Rin on her own _and _now he'd technically left her hungry too. Narrowing his eyes, he spoke in quite the same way as he would to one of his students – someone like Midoriya or even Kaminari. "_Why not_?"

"I'm sorry, sensei!" Rin held up her hands in mock surrender. "I just felt bad taking your money – and I wasn't all that hungry anyway.I also fell asleep pretty soon after you left, so…"

Aizawa shook his head. Sighed for the umpteenth time that day. Initially, when the doctor had informed him of Rin's tendency to not follow instructions, he'd thought it was because of a rebellious streak. Perhaps some misguided sense of feminist independence. However, as was becoming increasingly clear, it was more likely the result of a giddy and restless mind. A thousand and one ideas at any one moment. Head in the clouds. A little all over the place. It was quite innocent, really, but no less annoying, and for a moment Aizawa considered scolding her.

Only, a disarming gentleness crossed Rin's features as she continued to smile at him awkwardly. She muttered a sweet and sheepish _sorry _once again, touching at a curling strand of hair which had fallen over her shoulder, and said in low enough tones to make it a secret, "I did drink the one beer you had in the fridge."

"You did, did you?" Aizawa muttered, not much warmer than before.

"Mmm-hmm," Rin hummed. "It was gross. But I bought you another pack – though I wasn't really sure if you drink them because you like them or because they're the cheapest beer in the store. So I also got a six pack of beer that's _actually _nice."

Such an act would usually have been pretentious and intrusive. Marvelously aggravating, even. However, the fact of it was offered to Aizawa with such pure genuineness, such a delighted look of pleasure, that he found himself unable to be anything but slightly charmed. Gazing at Rin, the effect of her satisfaction was heightened by a curious glimmer in the near-luminous shade of her eyes – a dusty green, or was it more an icy green? A cloudy sort of absinthe – seemingly a world away from the discomfort of the day before.

Enough so that Aizawa felt somewhat less vexed by his shortcomings as a caretaker.

On the matter of the beers, he said, "You didn't have to do that."

"No. But I wanted to."

"I see." Turning away, Aizawa began to make for the bedroom, but stopped halfway. For two reasons. One, he realised that the bedroom may not have been entirely his own anymore, and a sense of hesitation at the idea of sleepily messed sheets or of Rin's clothes lying around made him uneasy. Two, distracted once more by the wafting scent of spices, he said over his shoulder, "Your cooking smells good."

"_Shit_~" Rin scurried past him, squeaking with scatterbrained shock. "I forgot about the rice!"


	7. Body

**A/N: Thank you again to everyone who has followed, favourited and reviewed! Be sure to let me know what you think of this next chapter~ xxx**

Chapter 7  
Body

Late on Sunday afternoon, there was a call from the police station.

Aizawa had known it without having to ask – from the table near the window, he had watched Rin answer with unsuspecting curiosity. Had seen her features drop into hard, blank lines. It was a short phone call and not much was said, but there was about Rin a sudden and impermeable air easily mistaken for indifference. She'd listened. Muttered some brief responses, and at the end of the phone call had said with surprising frost, "I'll be there soon."

Following which, she'd explained to Aizawa that the police had important information. To do with her. To do with the Voodoo Agency. At this point, they weren't sure what to make of it, but Detective Tsukauchi had asked her to come to the station.

"I'll take you," Aizawa had said. There were still a few hours before he had to be back at the dormitories, and his marking for the weekend was mostly finished.

But Rin had shaken her head. "I can take a train."

"Don't be silly."

* * *

Now, they waited. Rin was seated stiffly at Tsukauchi's desk while Aizawa got them coffee. Like him, Rin drank it black. Like him, she drank it obsessively – caffeine wasn't particularly good for anemics, but that didn't seem to stop her.

The police station was quiet, only a handful of detectives and officers mulling around the rows of desks. Paperwork was piled high. There was a dull whiteness about the light. And amongst it all, Rin stood out like a splash of snow against soot. Translucent. A vulnerable, pretty girl, quite unsuited to the stereotype of an underground hero.

Over the short course of the weekend, Aizawa had puzzled over it. Rin, in her soft jerseys and unobtrusive quietness – tending to smile at nothing, more breeze than human being – seemed much too wholesome for the underground. Much too soft for the Voodoo Agency, which was known for hiring heroes with strong stomachs. Even now, her brow furrowed and looking somber, Aizawa struggled to imagine her lurking around dark alleyways or apprehending hardened criminals.

He took her the coffee in a Styrofoam cup. Placed it on the desk and looked down at her. "Are you alright?"

"Perfectly," Rin replied, voice flat and unfazed.

"You're looking very serious."

Touching her fingers to the cup before her, taking it in a delicate hold, Rin glanced at Aizawa with the slightest curling of amusement. She said, "I'm always this serious."

Neither of them spoke again, sipping at their coffee and staring in opposite directions. In the last two days, Aizawa had realised Rin's peculiar talent of making herself scarce. Lost in her own thoughts and rarely venturing to make conversation, one could forget she was even there at all. Even in the middle of the apartment, seated on the couch or busy in the kitchen, she was comfortably unassuming – blending into the furniture, a pleasant background image.

It was something Aizawa appreciated, and something which quelled a lot of the discomfort he hadn't realised he'd felt when offering his help. Guests had always been a nuisance to him because of the accompanying sense of violation; because of the inevitable and obnoxious hijacking of his personal space. There was none of that with Rin. Only placid stillness. As was the case now, except with simmering undertones Aizawa couldn't quite place.

Emerging at last from the other end of the station, Detective Tsukauchi spotted Aizawa and Rin at his desk. He hurried towards them, carrying in his arms folders and paperwork, and offering a smile upon arrival – one which, in spite of its good-naturedness, was clearly unsettled and unsettling. He glanced between Rin and Aizawa as he greeted them, almost seeming unsure of whom to address first.

"Thanks for coming on such short notice," Tsukauchi said, taking a seat. "I would have waited until tomorrow…"

"You said you found something important," Rin interjected, surprisingly blunt despite her sugar-spun quality.

The smile vanished from Tsukauchi's face. A sudden darkness. He nodded, opening the folders he'd placed on the desk and pushing them towards Rin. Thin stacks of paper – atop each, several paper clips and pictures.

Pictures of cold, dead faces and bloodied wounds. Like wax models cut open and dribbled in oozing black.

Without looking too long at the gore of it, Aizawa's eyes darted towards Rin. He half-expected to find her sick with horror, squirming and aghast before the grisly images – but she was not. On the contrary, she pulled the folders towards herself, considering each one with cloudy distance. She offered nothing in the way of emotion. Scanned the faces and words without any strong affect, as though she were reading the morning news. Calm. Abstracted. Wholly unbothered.

At such composure, Aizawa found himself being surprised, and he returned his attention to the files. Somehow, he vaguely recognised the names, though struggled to combine them with the photographed faces – one of which had been so thoroughly hammered in that it was difficult to make out any sort of feature at all. Aizawa glanced over the police reports. Three victims, with no apparent similarity in the methods of their deaths.

The one without a face had been bludgeoned to death.

The other had been strangled and dumped in a pond, a sort of blue tinge to his photograph.

The third had been shot – a single, clean bullet through the chest.

While Rin considered such information, Tsukauchi watched her intently with his hands folded together upon the table. He too showed little feeling, though his mouth had a distinctive curve that made him look concerned, and Aizawa couldn't help but feel a little excluded from the unnamed understanding that seemed to pass over the folders.

Digging his hands into his pockets, Aizawa cleared his throat. "Who are these guys?"

"Pros," Tsukauchi said, turning his gaze onto Aizawa. "All three of them worked at the Voodoo Agency."

"What?"

Tsukauchi nodded again. Then, flattening his palms onto the desk, leaning towards Rin, he questioned her in low and gentle tones, "Did you know them?"

Aizawa watched. Without lifting her head from the folders, remaining absorbed, Rin nodded slowly. "Yes," she murmured, and then at last looked to Tsukauchi. "Not well though."

"I see," Tsukauchi said, though Rin appeared unruffled. "I'm sorry."

"When were they found?" Rin questioned.

"Yesterday."

"Do you think it has to do with the agency dissolving?"

There was a pause. Tsukauchi glanced to Aizawa, lips turning ever more downwards, and then back to Rin. Surrounded by the muted murmurings of the other police officers, silent themselves, a chilling anticipation slithered through the hush – and with a concern quite different to that which he'd felt at the hospital, Aizawa considered Rin warily. Her own eyes were locked onto Tsukauchi, waiting. Precariously perched between impatience and insecurity.

Her dewy air was wavering. Hands held finely over the files, Aizawa noticed the faintest tremble about her fingers.

Tsukauchi sighed. "There's something else, Hiruma-chan. Obviously, we haven't figured out how it all connects yet, and at this stage, I'm not really sure if I should be telling you this…" He lowered his voice. Almost glowered. "We found Doctor Voodoo this morning."

For the first time, Rin's neck stiffened. Aizawa continued to watch her: the delicate scrunch of her features, the sudden freeze throughout her limbs. At the sight of it, Aizawa felt an unusual urge to press his hands against her ears - as though she were a child, a sweet and lovely little girl, who couldn't possibly be allowed to hear what was coming next.

"You _found_ him?" Rin echoed.

Tsukauchi's frown deepened. "We found his remains."


	8. A Dead Man's Joke

Chapter 8  
A Dead Man's Joke

Aizawa wasn't sure why he watched Rin so intently. Why he kept his eyes on her, waiting for tears or horror or dismay; some kind of contortion to her features to show how dreadfully struck to the core she must have been. Of course though, none of that came – only a blank and firm-set distance. Rin stared at Detective Tsukauchi, removing her hands from the table. The movement of it was slow and deliberate, wholly without the mechanical unease of someone faced by death.

For reasons even more unknown than before, it made Aizawa anxious. Rin drew a sharp breath, beginning to pick at her jersey, and Aizawa searched her steeled air for hairline cracks and blemishes. Clues. Something to explain the bomb-like swelling in the atmosphere.

"All the deaths are related?" Rin questioned, somber in ways unsuited to her usually soft air.

"We think so," Tsukauchi said. He pulled the folders back towards himself, closing them one by one. "But what's strange is that the murders were committed by suspects entirely unrelated to each other. And all petty criminals too – small-time drug dealers and thieves."

"Like the guy who shot me."

Such bluntness – such quick and icy rationality – was almost jolting. Petty criminals shouldn't have been able to take out pro-heroes like this, with single gunshots and beatings. Let alone someone like Doctor Voodoo.

_Remains_, Tsukauchi had said. Doctor Voodoo's _remains_. A limb here. An ear there. At the thought, Aizawa felt his mouth curve sourly. In spite of his line of work, he'd never had much of a stomach for blood and guts, and so the idea of remains– cut up and clothed by shreds of Doctor Voodoo's colourful outfit – was thoroughly unappetizing.

Aizawa leaned a hand on the back of Rin's chair, looking to Tsukauchi while not really being focused on him at all.

"Could someone be targeting the Voodoo Agency?" he asked.

With slowness enough to seem unreal, Rin turned her eyes onto him; and in them, there was a strange swirling – some murky aura of thought or suggestion which Tsukauchi didn't seem to notice. Or which was being offered to Aizawa alone: a ghosting glance between warning and intimacy. Fleeting. Cautioning Aizawa away from unseen lines.

Piling the folders together and setting them aside, Tsukauchi leaned forward onto his elbows. "Looks like it," he muttered in response, low and conspiratorial. "Why and by whom are other questions entirely though. Hiruma-chan, do you know of anyone who might have motive and connections to do this? Did Doctor Voodoo have any particularly powerful enemies?"

Rin raised her eyebrows, almost looking irritated behind her pastel detachment. "_All pros have powerful enemies_," she said with impatience.

Naturally, she wasn't wrong.

Tsukauchi sighed.

"What did the suspects have to say about it?" Aizawa pressed, thinking once again how unlikely it all seemed. The Voodoo Agency had never bothered much with petty criminals – at least, not enough to instill a taste for vengeance. There had to be more to it. It was the only rational conclusion, especially considering the fact that these petty criminals were actually managing to pick off the Voodoo pros.

"It's very embarrassing, on our part," Tsukauchi groaned. "But we haven't been able to track any of the suspects down. After the incidents, each of them just sort of… vanished. It's not really the way a police officer should speak, I know, and we are working hard to find the guys, but at the moment we have no helpful information."

There it was again. Vanished. First the agency, and now the murder suspects. A quirk, of some sort? Was someone destroying paper trails and evidence?

A vile bitterness coated Aizawa's tongue, and he noticed Rin shift in her seat.

"Will the suspension on my hero license be lifted soon?" she asked.

"Sorry, Hiruma-chan," Tsukauchi said, looking to mean it. "Obviously we've managed to clear your name, and the police would appreciate your continued assistance – however, while this investigation is ongoing, also considering your injuries, it would be better for you to avoid hero work for a while."

Rin hummed. An ominous reverberation of poised intonations.

"I would also suggest staying aware." This time, Tsukauchi turned his attention to Aizawa, under which the latter felt his spine go rigged. Tapping his fingers against the desk, lifting his eyebrows in a sober look of premonition, Tsukauchi added, "I'm sure you've already guessed, but it doesn't seem like the hit on Hiruma-chan was any sort of coincidence."

* * *

Back in the car, Aizawa was overly conscious of Rin's silence and the sullen way in which she brushed her fingers along her arm. Up and down, over the folds of her sweater, gazing hard through the windscreen into the cloudy evening. Aizawa avoided looking at her too conspicuously, only glancing at random intervals out of the corner of his eye. As had been the case at the police station, Rin continued to maintain a thin veil of remoteness. Sitting straight and away from the backrest, she may have been anxious. Features still and soft, she may have been completely unfazed.

There were a multitude of telltale signs across her demeanor: a contradicting bouquet which confused and frustrated Aizawa.

He himself was not particularly affected by the news of Doctor Voodoo's demise. Yes, he was stunned, and it was all very unfortunate – but there was no sense of anguish. Nothing remotely close to it. Even less so now that some time had passed and Aizawa had boxed it neatly in his mind. If there was a funeral, he would obviously attend. Just as one might attend and mourn fleetingly for the family-friend of a long estranged grandparent. But that would be the extent of it.

As such, the moment belonged more to Rin than it did to him, and Aizawa felt a responsibility to be sympathetic.

"I'm sorry about Doctor Voodoo," he said, and saw Rin turn to look at him.

An odd silence. No rice cakes to chew on this time.

Aizawa considered saying something else. He'd never been much good at being comforting, and was slightly put-off by his position under Rin's impermeable gaze. Strangely enough, he could even feel a creeping sense of irritation. Like a headache, or phantom-nausea – something unpleasant and cynical, but easy enough to dismiss for the moment. At what, he couldn't decide. Perhaps the situation itself. Perhaps Rin: her unknowable ambiguity which apparently only became more potent the more Aizawa tried to figure it out.

At last, clearing her throat gently, Rin murmured, "I don't think he's dead."

"Excuse me?"

"Doctor Voodoo. He's not dead."

Denial was supposed to be the first stage of grief, but – really? Aizawa shook his head. "Look, I know it's probably hard to accept–"

"Call it what you want," Rin interrupted with surprising force. "But this isn't the first time something like this has happened. Doctor Voodoo had these stupid tendencies to disappear for weeks at a time. He never faked his own death, but he came close enough to it. I don't think this time is any different."

She spoke with enough conviction to almost convince Aizawa. Not taking his eyes from the road, which by now was bathed in greying darkness and flashes of streetlights, he raised an eyebrow. "Why do you think so?"

Daintily, Rin shrugged. "Maybe he's hiding."

"So you do think your agency is being targeted by someone?"

"I didn't say that."

"Then _what_?"

Rin didn't respond again, and at such wordlessness Aizawa's irritation reared its head once more. Now was not the time to be making up theories for a murder-mystery. Now wasn't the time to be acting like a death – or a supposed disappearance – was a joke. Feeling himself scowl, accelerating along the stretch of road, Aizawa swallowed the urge to say something biting.

Then Rin, seeming to sink into her oversized sweater, spoke again. "You'll probably say this isn't very rational of me, sensei, but I'm not really sure Doctor Voodoo would be the target in this situation. He's not dead. I'm sure of it. And if he's hiding, it's for something much bigger than his own safety." She paused, chewed on her next words, and then added, "Besides, dealers and robbers wouldn't stand a chance against him. Kind of like small-time cultists trying to take down the devil himself."

At a red light, Aizawa turned his attention fully onto Rin. Smooth and shadowed. Ominously pretty, like something out of myth. Illuminated by the scarlet glow, Rin didn't look away, instead offering Aizawa the same look as earlier: one of elusive understanding and oxymoronic caution. _Please, come in – trespassers will be prosecuted_. Met by her stare, Aizawa narrowed his eyes. Tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

"Why are you saying this, Hiruma?" he demanded.

To which she straightened again and, with irksome sweetness, smiled. She smiled, as though their conversation hadn't just been about death and conspiracy. An airy, girlish grin which – paradoxically – made Aizawa's lurking mood dissolve.

"Just a hunch," Rin cooed. "The police will probably figure everything out in no time."

* * *

After everything, it seemed irresponsible to leave Rin on her own. In a half-inspired moment, Aizawa even suggested she come to stay at the dormitories – there were always spare rooms; it wouldn't exactly be very comfortable, but at least it would be more secure; if it were only for a short time, Principal Nezu probably wouldn't mind – after all, he'd always seemed to like Rin. Of course though, it was a suggestion which was met with a skeptical expression, and Rin just about scoffed.

"You don't have to worry about me, sensei. I'm not a high school student anymore," she said.

To which Aizawa had no response. He was supposed to be overseeing her health, yes, but he wasn't necessarily supposed to be protecting her – he was a somewhat-involved bystander to her wellbeing, not a babysitter. By all logic, Rin had survived in his apartment thus far and would continue to do so, and so it did seem absurd that Aizawa was making this sort of fuss.

As such, after having returned to the apartment, Aizawa took it upon himself to leave again as quickly as possible. To leave Rin to her own devices and get back to the job he was actually supposed to be doing. He'd packed his bags earlier that day. Had rolled up his sleeping bag from its new place on the couch. By these tactical preparations, Aizawa was relieved, and it didn't seem to surprise Rin when he made for the door mere moments after having walked in.

There was no trace of the uneasiness from that first day, when she'd lingered in the doorway and had hesitated to let Aizawa go. Quite the contrary. She fluttered up alongside him, saying nothing, smiling faintly – without a doubt, it was a little strange that she'd so easily forgotten the events of the day. But it was not unwelcome. Aizawa had never had someone to see him off, he realised, and with Rin's wistful, understated ways it was almost… nice?

"Oh! _Wait_~"

Turning on her toes, Rin dashed into the kitchen. Aizawa could hear the fridge open and shut, and when Rin emerged once again into the entranceway, she held out a small Tupperware (one of the only ones Aizawa owned).

"What's this?" he questioned, eying out the container.

"Leftovers from that curry I made," Rin grinned. "You seemed to like it – and since you haven't had dinner, I thought maybe you'd want to take some."

He had liked the curry. He'd liked the curry very much, and did not hesitate to take it from Rin. As he did so, he considered the way in which she watched him, realising the oddity of it – where he saw her through the lens of a stranger, though the sense of it was slowly dulling, she seemed to look at him as one would at an old friend. A striking familiarity. Once again, not off-putting. She tilted her head, said goodbye. And Aizawa noticed for the first time that she had freckles.

Surprised by himself, he began to turn away, saying as he did so, "Call me if you need anything."

"Thank you, sensei. But I'll try not to."

With that, Rin closed the door on him, the apartment apparently more her home than his after a mere handful of days. For some moments, Aizawa stood in the corridor with the Tupperware in hand and his bag at his side, listening to the slight drizzle of Rin's footsteps as she retreated. Then, feeling an inexplicable exhaustion weigh itself upon him, he left.


	9. Wednesday, My Dude

Chapter 9  
Wednesday, My Dude

Throughout the week, there was little news on Doctor Voodoo. _Four pro-heroes dead in a string of underground murders. Police are currently investigating_. Nothing more online, no mention of it on the news channels – by which Aizawa wasn't exactly surprised. When it came to the press, the Voodoo Agency had always been particularly good at staying in in the dark: too little information for far too much fuss.

Which was obviously where Rin fitted in well with the bunch of them.

Over coffee in the staff room, Aizawa scrolled through the headlines on his phone. He'd called Rin the previous evening to check in with her – there'd been no further word from the police, and otherwise there was no need for him to worry. She was perfectly fine, even seemed to be enjoying herself. _Guess what, Aizawa-sensei!? There was a kitten in the hallway today. A little ginger one. I was supposed to be going out to get some things, but it was so cute! I ended up playing with it for ages. _

Charming.

And though Aizawa was always ready to drop everything for a kitten, he did find it dubious that Rin had answered his more important questions with short disinterest.

_Yes, Aizawa-sensei. No, Aizawa-sensei. Yes, I've been doing what the doctor said. No, I'm not lying._

There would be no pressing her for information, Aizawa could tell, and though he believed her when she said she was fine, he had resolved it would be better to go by the apartment after school that day to see for himself.

Setting down the phone, Aizawa sighed. Drank deeply on his coffee.

Certainly, the whole situation should have bothered him much more than it did – he'd spent some sleepless hours stewing over it, but had managed with relative ease to rationalize and streamline the whole thing. Grim as it was, pros died all the time. And Rin wasn't dead yet; if she was someone's target, then another attempt would have been made by now to get rid of her. Actually. If she was someone's target, then they would have made more of an effort to have finished the job in the first place.

Coincidence then? Perhaps.

Rin's impervious pleasantness was also disarming – her smiles over the weekend and her sweetness over the phone. Of course, she could simply have been very good at hiding her true feelings, and Aizawa felt certain there _was _something more to her demeanor. Like phantoms behind the door. Nonetheless though, reluctant care-giver as he was, he didn't intend to psychoanalyze her – he'd already tried, and it had been a fruitless attempt.

If there was anything Rin wanted him to know, she would tell him. Hopefully.

A high-pitched and overzealous greeting cut Aizawa's deliberations short. One of the usual interruptions. From his desk, at which he'd been dully staring, Aizawa looked up to find Yamada marching through the staff room. The latter grinned and nodded at the other teachers, pulled up into his usual seat next to Aizawa.

"It's Wednesday, my dude!" Yamada beamed, as though this were the most marvelous news in the world.

Aizawa only hummed.

"How are your classes going? Students settling in fine after the summer holidays?"

"They've been back for two weeks already," Aizawa said. "If they haven't settled in by now, then they shouldn't have come back at all."

"Always so blunt," Yamada laughed. "But quite right." Then, with an excitable glimmer, he leaned in, looking ready to share something deviously important. "Speaking of students… Guess who I ran into at the 7-11 last night."

Once again, Aizawa didn't respond, only staring at his fellow teacher – though with a terrible sense that he already knew the answer. Why it seemed like something he'd have to keep to himself, Aizawa wasn't sure. Probably because Yamada would have made a bigger deal about it than was actually warranted. Or probably because Rin's general nature made it seem like she was a secret to be kept.

Taking the silence as a sure sign to continue, Yamada did so with delight, "Remember Hiruma Rin? She was that pale girl who always used to pass out after the fitness classes. Well, before my shift at the radio station last night, I went out to get myself some snackers – and there she was! Buying dried peaches or something."

Aizawa sipped his coffee, making no attempt to appear interested. Although, to a certain degree, he was. "Is that so?"

"Yup! And you'd never believe how grown up she is – and pretty too, like some kinda fairy. I almost didn't recognise her! Remember how awkward she was? Always making a huge mess with her quirk…"

"I remember."

Yamada heaved a wistful sigh. "Doesn't it make you feel old, Aizawa? Knowing our very first students are now like, twenty-three."

"Twenty-one."

A surprised glance. "What?"

To which Aizawa shrugged simply, realising the irrelevance of the matter and half-wishing he hadn't said anything at all. "Hiruma Rin would be twenty-one," he clarified.

"_Oh._" Yamada smirked. "Keeping count, are you?"

Rolling his eyes, Aizawa offered nothing more in the way of a reply. All the while though, vaguely listening as Yamada continued to babble on about former students, he considered this little fact about Rin. Twenty-one. Twenty-one was still so young – and yet, shadows hung beneath Rin's eyes like age-old bruises, and she existed in the ways of a long-forgotten language.

* * *

There was no smell of cooking when Aizawa entered the apartment that afternoon, nor the white-noise of news on the TV. Everything was still and in the same disorder as always, with only vague traces of Rin amongst it all: a blanket across the couch, a book entitled _Quirkology: Influences on Social Relations _open on the coffee table. Aizawa wondered if she had gone out. To buy more dried peaches. For a walk, maybe – walking was supposed to be good for her recovery, and she could probably have used the sunlight.

However, halfway through the living area, a faint rustling drew Aizawa's attention and he turned toward the bedroom.

The open door revealed half-hearted darkness – the curtains had been drawn but were futile protection against the afternoon light as it cast a sickly glow about the room. The few pillows Aizawa owned lay scattered across the floor in peculiar peaks. A jersey here. A pair of slippers there. A soft mess of comforts in which Aizawa felt very much like an intruder.

And on the bed was Rin, oddly angled and fast asleep.

And at this hour.

She lay on her back, both arms splayed like clock hands above her head in amongst a mess of knotting hair. For a moment, Aizawa didn't move – held his breath as he considered this sleeping body. The decent thing would have been to look away. To realise his intrusion and disappear quickly and quietly from the room. He knew it, and willed himself to leave; but somehow he simply couldn't, rooted to his place and staring like a creep.

Not to say he got some weird thrill from watching her sleep, obviously. But there was something about it. Something almost fascinating.

For the first time, Aizawa realised that Rin was not what one would describe as vulnerable. Soft, yes. Also airheaded enough to walk into the furniture multiple times a day. But certainly not vulnerable, which shouldn't have come as such a surprise. It _was_ a surprise though, and that was why Aizawa had trouble not looking: because now Rin didn't seem to possess that peculiar alterity which made her frustratingly enigmatic. Now, there was no pretense of mystery.

An oversized t-shirt. The blanket kicked gracelessly from her body.

Stepping deeper into the bedroom (which had been his less than two weeks ago but now appeared completely foreign), close enough to touch the edge of the blanket, Aizawa noticed the scars across her forearms – terrible pinks against such pallor, scratched and skew in curving patterns like swollen, burned flesh. Part of her quirk. This he knew, though that didn't make it any less disconcerting.

Bandages peaked out from beneath the neckline of her shirt.

The material had lifted to reveal a sliver of stomach.

Slowly, Aizawa pulled the blanket back over Rin, considering the near-nauseating constriction between his lungs. Other than the slow rise and fall of her chest, Rin didn't move. Didn't make a sound as the blanket was lowered over her torso. It was strange, this harmless vulnerability – this drowsy, gentle stillness. Stranger still was that Aizawa didn't mind it. Rin had to rest. She seemed marvelously serene despite the surrounding confusion of pillows and sheets. Despite the odd hour to be so deeply asleep.

Aizawa had no intention of waiting for her to wake up. With one more cursory glance over her forearms and their scars, over her slightly flushed features, Aizawa slipped out from the bedroom and into the living area. However, when it came to exiting through the front door, he felt half a sense of regret at leaving so soon.

With a ghosting image of Rin's face in his mind, he acknowledged one thing.

She really did look like a fairy.


	10. AM

Chapter 10  
A.M.

For a long time, Aizawa stared joylessly at the quiz papers, attempting to summon any morsel of motivation to start marking. Already, he'd finished two cups of coffee; had considered heating up leftover stir-fry from the night before but, in a state of early-morning nausea, decided against it. Another cup of coffee? So much caffeine before 4A.M. probably wasn't the healthiest idea – not that Aizawa cared all that much. It was more the fact of having to leave the warm safety of his sleeping bag to traverse the tiled floor of the kitchen barefooted: a sacrifice which Aizawa was not willing to make, faced as he was by the ominous chill of this autumn morning.

As such, he remained confined to the table by the window, cocooned in his sleeping bag and cursing his sleeplessness. Outside, no soul seemed to be awake with him. Occasional lights flickered on and off in other buildings, preceded only by lonely streetlamps. Few cars hissed past. No stray voices echoed up through the darkness. Quiet and empty. Aizawa alone.

With a yawn – more of tedium than of tiredness – he turned to ogle the couch. It was only Saturday morning. There was really no need for him to be marking right then; frankly, the saner thing would have been to crawl back onto the sofa and to shut his eyes once more. Indeed, Aizawa was tempted. But at the same time, he knew it would be pointless. Sleep evaded him at the best of times, only to sneak up when it was least convenient.

No amount of counting sheep helped. No breathing techniques or bullshit sleepy-teas, as Kayama had once suggested – not that he'd ever admit it to her, but once he'd even gone so far as to try her prescriptions of chamomile and lemon balm. It was nothing but a bunch of nonsense witchery.

Rin also wasn't a particularly quiet sleeper, which did nothing to help the situation. All through the night, Aizawa had listened to her toss and turn: the scrunch and thud of pillows being tossed, the blanket being pushed and pulled. Every now and then, she mumbled something unintelligible, invariably followed by the flash of the bedroom light being turned on and then off again. Such restlessness was contagious, it seemed, and Aizawa wondered if it had to do with the unfamiliarity of the space – that is, if Rin felt nearly so out of place in the apartment as Aizawa perceived her to be. If, in her ethereal sort of ways, she felt horrendously uncomfortable between such lackluster walls.

Or maybe it simply had to do with Aizawa himself. Maybe his presence over the weekends bothered her. An unfortunate possibility, and also slightly vexing, considering this _was _his apartment.

There was the same sort of noise now, movement in the form of a creaking bed and a muffled sigh. Without shifting his position, Aizawa watched the bedroom door, waiting – for the light, for more mumbling. For a while though, none of that came, and it seemed anticlimactic after the bustle of the night that that should be the end of it.

Then, however, from the undisturbed darkness into the dull illumination of the living area, Rin emerged.

She stood there for some moments, looking confused and sleepy and spectacularly pale, hair falling about in a lopsided disorder. She too was barefoot, Aizawa noticed; white toes peeking out from beneath floppy, oversized sweatpants.

"Aizawa-sensei?" she droned, tilting her head and squinting against the living room light.

"Yes?"

Rin blinked once. Twice again, then asked what he was doing – to which Aizawa gave an unenthusiastic grunt. They stared at each other without any apparent lucidity, dreamlike and hazy against the weak glow of the bulb above. Quite eerie, really, but also a strange comfort to have another pair of eyes to look into. Even if those eyes were shadowed and nearly translucent against the darkness. Saying nothing, Rin disappeared again in a flutter, leaving behind her an afterimage like an ephemeral silhouette, and Aizawa wondered for a moment if she'd even been there at all.

On the other end of the apartment, the kitchen light went on, accompanied by the low rumble of the kettle and the clinking of glass. Cupboards opened and shut. A wavering shadow crossed the floor in obscure shapes.

When Rin reappeared once again, she carried two mugs, wordlessly placing one down in front of Aizawa before taking a seat opposite him. She eyed the spread of papers, clasping her own mug to her chest in possessive comfort. This was a habit of hers, apparently: mute gifts of coffee in the morning, casually leaving them for Aizawa to drink without his having asked. Fortunately, it was something he saw no reason to complain about, and Aizawa accepted her offerings with equally silent gratitude.

Unzipping his sleeping bag and reaching to take the cup, he glanced between his coffee and Rin. She seemed to be poised between being contemplative and thoroughly displeased, lips pursed into a thin, firm line and her eyes fixed rigidly on the table.

"Did I wake you?" Aizawa questioned, voice a low grumble.

Rin shook her head. "I hardly ever sleep past three in the morning," she said. Then, gesturing to the papers, she posed her own question. "Are you marking?"

"Something like that."

"Why so early?"

"Couldn't sleep."

The noise Rin made in response was something between a hum and a delicate snort. She lifted her coffee to her lips, and Aizawa followed suit – though over the rim of his cup, he continued to watch her, noticing the subtle tremble about her fingers and the slightly bloodshot dullness of her eyes.

When she spoke again, leaning forward onto her elbows, it was with subdued composure and the usual gentleness, "Can I help?"

"You don't have to do that," Aizawa frowned.

"I'd like to though. If there's a mark scheme… and if you don't mind…"

Once again, they stared at each other, one waiting for the other to say something more, and it occurred to Aizawa again that he found Rin's presence perfectly tolerable. Which may not have seemed like much, but was really quite significant – in the close space of his apartment and in the privacy of the morning, it was not unpleasant having her across the table, looking grumpy and at the same time sort of endearing in her mass of clothes and cloud of hair. Having her there was rather like owning a cat, actually: discreet and inexplicably absent, but when she did decide to show her face it was more than welcome.

Hesitantly, Rin brushed her fingers against the edge of a page, watching Aizawa as he watched her. "Obviously," she began with care, "if you _do_ mind–"

"Not at all," Aizawa said quickly. If anything, he would even appreciate the help. From a passing glance over the papers the day before, he'd already picked out infuriatingly stupid mistakes and wasn't so sure he could stomach the burden of it alone. "However, you need to make more coffee first."

Glancing to his cup, Rin raised her eyebrows. "You're finished already?"

"I don't waste time."

"Well then," with an appealing coil at the corner of her lips, Rin offered something between a pout and a smile. "I'll be right back."

* * *

They didn't say much else in the time that followed, and were finished marking within the hour. Through the entirety of it, Rin had fiddled and sighed – granted, it was all quite subtle, but in his ardent observation of her, Aizawa noticed everything. She twiddled the pen between her fingers. Bounced her foot incessantly. Would glance often from the papers to the window, or to some obscure dust particle, or to her hands, and stare out into nothing for what seemed an age. Out of the twenty quizzes, she'd only ended up marking four or five. Not exactly an impressive result, but Aizawa found her efforts charming. Enough so that he made the next batch of coffee.

When he returned, Rin had slipped from the table to assume her more usual position on the couch – perfectly centered and fortified by pillows, legs hugged to her chest in a child's position. She smiled, much more awake and much less sulky than before, as Aizawa placed her mug on the coffee table. He made for his seat, feeling Rin's eyes follow him as he did so, as he sat and threw his sleeping bag over his legs in a makeshift blanket.

"Do you like your class, sensei?" Rin asked.

"They're not the worst," Aizawa shrugged in turn.

She leaned her head onto her knees, looking at him with sugar-spun expectancy. "You seem to like them a lot more than you liked us."

There was no hint of malice in her words, nor any inkling of guilting insinuation. It was stated as a cool, rational fact – and to a certain extent, it was. He hadn't particularly liked anyone in his first class, though for Rin to amalgamate herself with the rest of them in an unnamed 'us' seemed amiss somehow.

Nonetheless, Aizawa humored her, feeling himself to be more generous than on any other given morning. "What makes you say that?"

"You haven't expelled anyone yet," Rin grinned thoughtfully. "With my class though, you'd expelled almost everyone before the middle of second year."

"I didn't expel you."

"No," Rin said, slow and deliberate. "But you almost did. You threatened me several times."

"I never meant it." Looking away, thrumming his fingers along the curve of his cup, Aizawa realised it probably sounded like a lie. Indeed, he remembered several trips to Recovery Girl's office and even to the hospital in which he'd admonished Rin – for recklessness, for a gross lack of attention to the finer details in her quirk – and warned that he'd send her packing at the next opportunity. Yes, he'd thought she was more challenging than most. But at the same time, he'd never thought she was incapable enough to be expelled. "It was a logical ruse."

Rin raised an eyebrow, almost looking to be smirking. "Ah. Is that it?"

"Yes."

It seemed impossible now that he'd been so harsh to someone like Rin – harsh enough that, on one occasion, he'd even caught her shedding fitful tears in Recovery Girl's office. To think of it, he remembered it well, probably because that was the first time he'd ever seen someone crying because of him. _Aizawa-sensei hates me_, Rin had murmured, sobbing and pathetic, all bandaged. _**Hates **__me_. The word hung before him, somehow forgotten and now suddenly vivid and painfully clear.

Contrary to what may have come across to the general public, Aizawa didn't have it in him to hate anybody. Strongly dislike, yes. But not hate - hate was far too full-bodied and irrational an emotion. And for him to feel that for Rin, in all her harmless sweetness...

"Just so you know," Aizawa added, too quick to swallow his words, "I never hated you."

Rin's lifted her head from her knees to gaze at him, and from the confused scrunch of her features, it became awkwardly apparent that she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.


	11. Orbit

Chapter 11  
Orbit

_The moon encircles the earth. Close but never touching in a doomed and lonely orbit – and so it seemed with you. With every revolution, I realised the cold expanse of distance, the divergences in lifetimes and memory. Despite everything, I just couldn't reach you sensei. Not then and not yet._

_There were moments though. Moments when gravity seemed to pull me closer and all things seemed to align, if only for evanescent fractures in time. Those moments when the threat of expulsion loomed, and I could feel your eyes boring into me like flames through the atmosphere. When you yelled, when you sighed, when it seemed to me like I was the most perfect disappointment of us all. _

_Weak. Bruised. Shattering in ways you would never see – and most of all, constantly relying on your rescue._

_Despite everything, I could never quite reach you._

_And yet, when my failings collided with the weight of your expectation in all the warming glow of falling stars and meteors, I never stopped to fight it. Not once did I wish it gone, because no matter how I may have cried or whimpered or bled, it was the closest to real I had ever felt. For all the chaotic explosions of emotion, for all the devastated attempts at being strong, I had never felt so safe. Under your glares. Faced by your insistence that I be better 'or else'._

_I had never felt so safe._

_Because in spite of it all, you looked at me like one would look at the stars, when all I'd ever believed was that I was the darkness in between. _

_I don't think you ever realised it, sensei – that you looked at me like that. That while you threatened and scolded, while you drifted out of my reach, you also sent electricity through my lungs and a million pinpricks through my bones. Like dead galaxies flaring back to life. _

_You tell me that you never hated me, and I know. I've known it for a long time. _

_That if you hated me, you would not have been there. Always watching. Always catching. If you hated me, you would never have clutched me to your chest those days when my fingers would slip and I'd cut myself a little too deep, powerless against the bleeding. You'd hold my wrists. You'd call me an idiot, and careless, and clumsy. Then you'd sit for hours with me while the doctors dabbed and stitched, transfusing blood as dark and oozing as black holes into my body. You'd be there: saying nothing, saying everything._

_Always looking at me with the same bland softness of looking into the faraway night._

_Just the same as all those years before. _

_Just the same as you look at me now. _

_You didn't hate me. I don't know what you felt, but what I'm sure of is that you saw more in me than I ever saw in myself. Even in your distance, despite the undulating void emptied of memory or understanding, you saw something of a glimmering potential. _

_If that means you cared, I can't say. If that means you felt anything more for me than responsibility, I still don't know. It may not be any different now, sensei – this comfort, this safety in being so close – but for now, for this moment, the infinite distance has become a little less infinite. Whether by coincidence or cosmic intervention, gravity has brought you just a little nearer once more and I can almost reach you. Almost. __**Almost**_**. **

_The world might be crumbling. My farcical attempt to be a hero might be collapsing in on itself with all the blinding clarity of a supernova. _

_Everything might be burning, and we might be faced with the impending destruction of the moon and the earth crashing together. But for now, I see no reason to stop or breathe or even blink – because so many times before, my soul has fallen apart, and you were always there to hold together the pieces._

_Even if you didn't know it. From the very beginning, you were always there._


	12. Autumnal Equinox (I)

Chapter 12  
Autumnal Equinox (I)

Rin was drinking wine when Aizawa wandered through the living area on Sunday evening, not readying himself to leave as would usually have been the case but instead clad in sweatpants and an old t-shirt. Rin watched him intently, and for the most part Aizawa ignored the way her eyes tagged along as he paced up and down – gathering papers, doing nothing in particular. Eventually, however, when her attention got the better of him, he turned to return her stare.

"Something wrong?"

"Aren't you supposed to be going back to the dorms?" Rin asked. Touching the rim of the wine glass to her lips, she frowned, as though at a confused slur of poetry.

"Not tonight," Aizawa said simply. "It's the Autumnal Equinox tomorrow. There won't be any classes."

"The Autumnal Equinox?"

Aizawa hummed.

"You're sure?"

"Quite."

To which Rin's forehead wrinkled, eyes sparkling with determined thought as she lugged down the final sips of her wine. A Shiraz, apparently – Aizawa had tried it tentatively on Friday night by Rin's gentle prompting, though he happened to be quick in remembering why he didn't like wine. Rather too much like drinking vinegar for his taste, and even under Rin's glimmering gaze of subtle delight, he'd felt no shame in pulling his nose up at the acidic taste of what was supposed to be spice and leather.

Glass emptied, Rin rose and slinked into the kitchen, the baffled crumple of an expression persisting across her face. From where he stood, Aizawa could see her stop by the fridge, quiet and still for some moments as she considered what must have been the magnetized calendar.

Then he heard her mumble in a low, honeyed tone, "Well_, _shit."

"What?"

"You're right! I completely lost track of time~" Rin declared in something of a gasp, chasseing from the kitchen once again. Hands held firmly to her hips – revealing the slender narrowness otherwise hidden by her navy sweatshirt – she pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes at Aizawa, seemingly at a loss. "Do you think the grocery store is still open?"

Aizawa buried his hands into his pockets. It wasn't late. The shops wouldn't have closed yet, but somehow the thought of having to do shopping right then exhausted him – even if he himself wasn't the one who'd be going. "What on earth for?" he asked.

"I need ingredients. For mushroom soup and ohagi*," Rin said, and lifted a finger to tap at her lips. A nervous habit, of some sort. "It's kind of dumb, but my grandmother and I have this tradition, and I promised her I would keep it up when I lived on my own – though I suppose now I don't _really _live on my own – but still! I _have _to make the mushroom soup and ohagi. Otherwise… I don't know… My grandmother might have a heart attack. Or something."

At such a morbid hyperbole, Aizawa couldn't help but be amused.

He raised his eyebrows, resisting the twitch at the corners of his mouth. "The grocery store is probably closed now," he lied. "But there are some things I also need to get," he lied again. "We'll go together tomorrow morning."

"Together?"

Aizawa shrugged. "Unless you'd prefer to go alone."

"No," Rin murmured, the white shade of her cheeks darkening to the faintest pink – though that could perhaps have been a trick of the light. She shifted her weight, glancing away with new reserve and, still holding her empty wine glass, smiled slightly. "I don't mind if you come."

* * *

What sort of restless inanities left him staring out the window, why he'd decided that now was a good time to watch the streetscape below in all its miniscule detail, it was hard to say. However, it proved a useful enough distraction while waiting for Rin to get ready – which, for someone who rarely seemed to brush her hair and lived in a cotton rotation of the same six jerseys and sweatshirts, was taking a surprisingly long time.

She'd just showered, and was probably changing the dressing on her wound.

Outside, trees flared in obnoxious reds, a striking contrast to the clouds that bruised the sky. Clouds which did not promise rain so much as they set a thin, fragile layer of gloom over the streets. It was a particularly cold day, strange for the early stage of autumn, and people emerged from the surrounding buildings clad in scarves and boots and stockings. Aizawa himself felt the chill, making him rather more eager to stay in his sleeping bag than to face the grocery store.

He'd had no plans for this public holiday – nothing outside of the usual, of course, which was to do nothing – and for the most part, he had expected to spend it reviewing the week's lesson plans or maybe even cleaning something in the apartment. Pointless and brain-dead sort of activities which, under normal circumstances, Aizawa would not have willingly disrupted. In this case though, he felt no qualms over the change in routine.

The promise of it was unexpected – three weeks ago, he would not have dreamed of going shopping with a former student, not even in his wildest nightmares – but it was not unpleasant either. Frankly, perhaps by some guilty sense of responsibility to play the gracious host, a role at which he was still doing an atrocious job, Aizawa was even anxious to leave.

Behind him, a phone vibrated. Once. Then again, and again, and again.

Turning from the window to the source of the noise, Aizawa found Rin's cellphone on the coffee table. The screen was alight with a phone call, the word _Granny _spelled across it.

As though at some foreign animal, Aizawa stared as the phone rang. Insistent buzzing. A glaring announcement of _Granny_ calling, _Granny _calling – and with each passing second, he debated answering. The bedroom door was still closed, with no sign that Rin would be emerging any time soon. Of course, it would be rude to answer someone else's phone call. But then again, it would also be rude and probably very distressing to leave a poor grandmother hanging.

Slowly, half-hoping he would be too late in swiping the green symbol on the screen, but to no avail, Aizawa took the phone and brought it to his ear.

"Hello?"

A silence on the other end. Maybe he was too late after all.

But then, before Aizawa could feel any sense of reprieve, there came an almost accusatory voice, crackling and coarse like dry leaves, '_Who is this?'_

"This is Aizawa Shouta–"

'_Why do you have my granddaughter's phone? Are you a boyfriend?_'

"No," Aizawa said quickly, his own throat tightening with weird sourness at the suggestion. "No, not at all. I'm just Rin's old teacher." And he said his name again.

Once more, he was met by a static hush, though he could hear low mutterings on the line. Anxious, convoluted whispers, followed by a different voice – this one more feminine and soft, confrontingly familiar, '_You say this is Aizawa Shouta? Rin's old homeroom teacher?'_

"That's right," Aizawa confirmed with relief.

'_Oh!_' an excited bubble, bursting over the phone.'_How wonderful to finally meet you, Aizawa-sensei-san. Rin has always told us so much about you… This is her grandmother. Sasaki Akane. I'm sorry about my husband. He's very protective, and very worried about Rin after ~ you know…_'

"Of course. Please don't apologise."

'_How is Rin? Is she alright? Is she doing what the doctors said? That girl has never been much good at following instructions._' There was a slight tutting noise.'_Oh! Thank you so much Aizawa-sensei-san for all you've done for Rin! I'm so sorry we've caused you this trouble – as soon as the hospital called, I thought of so many ways to try and get there…_'

Aizawa swallowed against nothing. He hated phone calls. He hated speaking to strangers. And this woman, seemingly bred with the same beguiling wholesomeness as her granddaughter, made it particularly difficult to hang up. "It's no trouble, Sasaki-san," Aizawa insisted, and that was perfectly true.

Rin's grandmother didn't seem to notice. '_I was so worried. With my husband's health and my own leg, it seemed almost impossible… But then Rin called, and told us you had offered to help! Aizawa-sensei-san, she has always admired you. Ever since she was a child ~ always going on about how she wants to be just like Eraser Head, just like Aizawa-sensei. And now here you are! I couldn't believe it. After everything, I just couldn't believe that it was you…_'

Such sudden gushing was horrendously disconcerting. More so since Aizawa hadn't the faintest idea where any of it was coming from, or why he was being referred to by his hero name. Dementia? An overemotional disposition? He tried to place such sentimentality, tried to align it somehow with Rin, but could not – not when he thought of her muted, unfazed ways.

Pressing a hand to his nape, rubbing absent-mindedly, Aizawa said, "Rin's only staying with me for a little while, Sasaki-san. I haven't done anything special."

And then at last, while he spoke, the bedroom door slid open to reveal a wide-eyed and curious Rin. Hair up in a wet ponytail. Flowing, white skirt from that first day out the hospital and a pink jersey – and with the bloomy redness about her cheeks, she looked a soft and blotchy image of watercolours. She raised her eyebrows, and for a moment Aizawa stared back, unsure of why he briefly became unaware of how Rin's grandmother continued to chatter over the phone.

Wordlessly, Rin fluttered up to him in a fruity-scented rush, and held out her hand to take the phone.

Aizawa, conscious once again of his position, said his goodbyes. "Rin's here to take your call now. Happy Equinox."

'_Oh! Oh! Aizawa-sensei-san!_' he heard. '_We'll never forget how you brought Rin back to us._'

And on that note, Rin took the phone and scurried away, back into the safety of the bedroom where she shut the door once more.

* * *

**A/N: *Ohagi is a Japanese treat traditionally eaten on the Autumnal Equinox. **

**Stay tuned for Autumnal Equinox Part II! I was originally going to post both parts as one chapter, but that would have been waaaay too long, with waaaay too much important information in one go. In the meantime, be sure to leave me a little (or long) review to make my day! xxx**


	13. Autumnal Equinox (II)

Chapter 13  
Autumnal Equinox (II)

They walked to the grocery store without too much conversation, and Aizawa was relieved to find the place half-empty when they arrived. It was still early and even icier than it had been in the apartment, the air weighed down heavily by a tired grey. Most people were probably still in bed or lazing about over cups of coffee. One part of Aizawa was envious. The other was too occupied by his earlier conversation with Rin's grandmother to actually notice.

The phone call had been a glimpse into those 'challenging family circumstances' Nezu had always glazed over.

Sasaki Akane and her husband – in some perverted way knowing the name seemed like a victory, a fracture in Rin's halting wall of obscurity.

She didn't mention the phone call, and so neither did Aizawa; however, like an itch in ungainly places, he continued to stew over the strangeness of it. There was no reason why Rin's grandmother would have known the name Eraser Head, nor could Aizawa imagine Rin having ever been a 'fan' in any way or form. At the very least, not enough of a fan for her grandmother to lose her mind in a mess of starstruck emotion.

On top of which, the woman had said some baffling things. _We'll never forget how you brought Rin back to us_. What was _that _supposed to mean?

All the while, Rin breezed up and down the shopping aisles, domestically eying out all sorts of ingredients. Unearthly looking mushrooms. Red beans. Another bottle of wine and rice cakes. And in doing so, she seemed oblivious to Aizawa as he followed behind her, watching with restrained interest. Watching the way she walked with an offbeat bounce to her step – toe first, he realised, like a toddler. The way her hands touched restlessly at the contents of the shelves. Her spooky paleness. Her tendency to mumble to herself.

Perplexing, that he should be noticing these things.

Actually. No. What was perplexing was that he noticed these things _and _that he realised there was a certain, peculiar charm about them. Fine details. Little oddities like decorations.

In the cooled foods section, Rin picked up packages of white fish, deliberating and then returning each to its place in gentle rejection. Too small. Too boney-looking. Not fresh enough; and when she at last found one acceptable, she placed it tenderly in the basket and moved on to repeat the process with the shrimp. Weighing in her hands. Humming. Taking forever to make a decision.

As she did so, eyes flitting up to glance at Aizawa, she smiled. "Do you like seafood, sensei? Or would you prefer chicken?"

He told her it didn't matter. Anything was fine – and though Rin didn't seem to notice, Aizawa immediately felt bad for the impatience with which he said it. He was eager to leave, which had been the case pretty much since they'd first arrived. However, he was also the one tagging along on Rin's shopping trip. Though it remained unclear why he'd decided to do so in the first place, it was the fate he had committed himself to – there'd be no backing out or rushing things along.

Rin took one more bag of shrimp and, after going through the motions, placed it amongst the rest of her shopping items.

Eyes luminous and glimmering, she looked to Aizawa again, tilting her head. "Can I ask you something, sensei?"

"Go ahead."

"Do you have family in Musutafu?"

Considering this, Aizawa felt his mouth turn downwards in a sour frown. "My parents live in Tokyo."

"Oh?" Rin turned to tip-toe onwards down the aisle, saying over her shoulder as she did so, "Tokyo's only forty minutes away."

"Yes."

"So?"

"So, what?"

As he came up next to her, Rin raised her eyebrows. "Are you going to visit them?"

That was the done-thing on the Autumnal Equinox. Reconnecting with family. Tending to the gravestones of ancestors and visiting shrines. A very romantic image of smiling relatives and warm, vivid colour. However, being neither religious nor on the best of terms with his parents – differences in opinion, taste, moral values, basically everything really, didn't make for fun family bonding – Aizawa only shook his head. "I haven't the slightest desire to do that."

"Oh…" Sounding sorry, Rin lowered her gaze towards her basket. Side by side, the two of them walked up the next aisle – lined with pre-made meals and frozen things to which Rin didn't even glance. "If my grandparents lived so close, I'd visit them all the time," she mumbled.

There it was. The fracture. The hairline crack Aizawa looked out for more than he'd like to admit. "Your grandmother seems fond of you."

At this, Rin paused in her walk. The pleasant glimmer about her features grew hazy, and Aizawa was met with a steeled gaze. He noticed her fingers tighten around the handle of her basket, her lips settling into a hard line. "Aizawa-sensei," Rin said softly. "I'm really sorry about my grandmother. I don't know what she said to you earlier, but you seemed… annoyed."

Surprised, Aizawa shook his head. "No. Not at all."

"She gets really emotional about the slightest things," Rin continued, seeming reluctant. "She overreacts."

Under the fluorescent yellow of the store lights, she was a spectacular shade. Like a lily, or the whitest of white porcelain. Facing each other fully, Aizawa tried to be subtle in glancing over the particular details of her face: the scattering of freckles, the sylphlike curve to her nose and cheekbones. It may have been insensitive, but when Rin said nothing more Aizawa took full advantage of the opportunity. "What about your grandfather?"

Rin's eyes widened. "You spoke to him too?"

"Briefly."

Absent-mindedly, she rubbed a hand up her forearm. "He has dementia."

"I see." Aizawa said. "I assume you're close to them."

"Yes. They've taken care of me for a very long time."

"What about your parents?"

The question appeared to strike a nerve. Rin's hand stopped moving, and she clutched the sleeve of her jersey in a clawed tightness. Her gaze pierced through Aizawa with all the poignant threat her vampiric loveliness suggested, and he felt his heart plunge at the realization that she was irritated. No, not irritated. Upset. He'd gone too far without even having gotten started.

"I'm sorry," he grumbled. "That's not any of my business."

"No. It's fine," Rin said, and swallowed against nothing. "I just – I'm not sure how to say it…" She chewed on her words, bit her lip. "I don't know where my parents are." Aizawa didn't shy away from the intensity of her expression, listening attentively, waiting for her to continue. Ready to clasp her hand before she dug straight through the jersey with her nails. But she relaxed her grip, and pouted her lips slightly. "Honestly, I don't really care to know."

The jolting callousness of her words brought an end to the conversation, and the two of them continued through the store in silence – one which was oppressive and brooding, sending Aizawa into yet another flat-spin of frustration. Instead of shedding any clarity on the matter-of-Rin, he'd only been left with more questions. More absorbed fascination with this girl he'd once cared relatively little for – had she always been like this? How had he not noticed? What charm was there in those ghosting smiles of hers, that strange otherness that separated her from the rest of the world, that hadn't been there before? And why did he care?

The teller grinned at them both with a friendliness quite irksome for so early in the morning, glimpsing between Aizawa and Rin expectantly. It must have been an odd, even improbable picture: Rin, floaty and sugar-white like a daydream, next to Aizawa, who was not unaware of his scowl and the lazy sloppiness of his appearance; just as he wasn't unaware of what it must have looked like, the two of them together in the grocery store at this hour. And as he paid for all Rin's items – much to her dismay; _But Aizawa-sensei! There's so much… And you didn't even get any of the stuff you needed! Please don't do that. It's fine. Really. Please don't _– he silently pleaded that there would be no one like Yamada to witness any of it.

* * *

The wind had picked up, cold gusts that blew and died down and then blew again like phantoms against them.

Now out on the street, Aizawa found himself in less of a rush to get back to the apartment. It was only a few blocks away. A fifteen minute walk, if one walked fast. However, switching his attention between the muted tap of their steps and Rin's skirt as it waved about her legs in dramatic flares of white, he almost dragged his feet. Nodding; listening with the same, concealed attention whenever Rin spoke – she pointed out the different shades of red and orange leaves; commented on strangers' facial expressions; thanked Aizawa again and again for buying the groceries.

Occasionally, she'd lift a hand to scratch at her chest.

"Are your bandages bothering you?" Aizawa asked eventually.

And with a dainty shrug, Rin replied, "I think it's the stitches."

"How much longer are they supposed to stay in for?"

She hesitated, switched her shopping bag from one hand to the other. "Uh– Another five days or so, maybe. I think," she said, and grinned sheepishly. "The doctor will probably take them out for me at my next appointment." Then her cheeks flushed, a faint rosiness that stood out in a shock against her pallor. Rin continued to smile at Aizawa, suddenly looking embarrassed. "Speaking of which, there's actually something I've been meaning to tell you~"

Raising his eyebrows, Aizawa tried not to stare at Rin too directly, his interest piqued by the ambiguous sweetness in her tone and the coquettish swirls in her expression.

"Before I say anything though," she continued, "you should know that it's really no big deal. My wound is healing fine, and I don't think there's anything to stress about – so don't be mad."

At this, Aizawa remained silent. He shot her a look, more disconcerted than comforted by the way she beamed up at him with all the innocent nonchalance in the world, feeling an ominous sharpness swell between his temples. _Don't be mad _was a sure sign that he would most likely – definitely – be mad, and when Rin said nothing for a moment, watching him for a reaction, Aizawa narrowed his eyes. "Well?"

"Well… You know how yesterday I said I lost track of time? That I'd forgotten it was the Autumnal Equinox today?"

"_Yes_?"

Rin brought a hand up to her cheek, tapped her fingers at the corner of her still-smiling mouth. "That wasn't the only thing I forgot about. I've kind of missed two doctor's appointments," she said. "But it's really not serious! They were only supposed to be check-ups, and the second one was actually a make-up for the first. I'm only telling you because I didn't want the doctor to bother you with it. Sorry, sensei. Don't be mad."

There again. _Don't be mad _– in spite of the way his face twisted into what was surely a dreadful expression, Aizawa wouldn't exactly say he was mad. Perturbed, yes, doubting that a missed appointment – _two _missed appointments – was the only part of her treatment Rin had forgotten. More than that, he was irritated. With her, for being so blushingly unfazed, so smilingly agreeable that it was almost impossible to stay irritated. And with himself, because this was exactly the type of thing he was supposed to be taking care of.

"How do you forget two doctor's appointments, Hiruma?" he hissed. If both his hands weren't clutching grocery bags, he would have pressed them to his eyes, feeling a burn slither itself beneath his lids. "Honestly."

Rin tilted her head like a doll, looked away guiltily. "I've – uh – I just did. I was busy and didn't realise how quickly time was going by."

"Busy?" Aizawa glared at her. "Busy with what?" What, in the cramped space of the apartment, could Rin possibly have been so absorbed by as to lose track of the days like that?

She shrugged, pulled her lips into a weird line. "Stuff."

"_Stuff_."

"Yes – stuff."

"Tell me what stu–"

Before Aizawa could finish, Rin froze and spun backwards on her toes, breezy in her layers of materials. Swift. Graceful. "Aizawa-sensei! _Look_~!"

She crouched down before a store window, staring intently downwards. Before Aizawa saw whatever it was she was looking at, he saw her face burst into a shimmering look of delight – lips spread wide in a gasp, eyes wide and enchanted. It was so sudden, and so beguiling – this childish gaiety, the marvelously affected glow with which Rin gazed into a cardboard box beneath the store window – Aizawa forgot for the moment that he was supposed to be scolding her. Following her gaze, lowering himself next to her, did nothing at all to help the situation.

A white kitten. Lonely and no larger than Aizawa's hand. It quivered in a corner, mewed up at them in a feeble, heartbreaking chime. Bubblegum pink nose. Blue eyes, scrunched up and confused as it squinted against the hazy morning light. So small. So cute. Aizawa could have screamed.

Rin cooed next to him. "Who put you out here? Teeny baby! You must be so scared!"

She put down her grocery bag, and tenderly scooped her hands around the kitten. Slowly, as though picking up fine china. Deftly, as though she'd done this a million times before. Aizawa watched, half-jealous and half-in-awe, as Rin brought the kitten to her chest, cradling it and crooning. Against the pale pink of her jersey, the kitten was a perfect decoration of fluff, wiggling and steadying itself in her hold; and when it settled against her, continuing to whine gorgeously, Aizawa lifted a finger to stroke the bird-light fur of its head.

"She's so little," Rin said in a whisper, running her thumb along the kitten's side.

"Tiny," Aizawa agreed.

"And she's shaking like crazy."

There was a pause. The kitten's mews grew shorter, less frequent, but no less tragic – and after some moments, Aizawa glanced up at Rin. She was already looking at him. An endearing question mark of an expression. Dewy-eyed and soft, yet quite striking. It was an enigmatic look, full of unspoken somethings, which set Aizawa's stomach suddenly and inexplicably in knots. When he lowered his gaze back to the kitten, he found himself staring between it and Rin's hands. Bony-fingered, a light dusting of more freckles over her knuckles. Fine, enchanting hands.

"Do you want to hold her, Aizawa-sensei?"

"What?"

Rin tilted her head. Held the kitten out to Aizawa with gentle prompting. "Do you want to hold her?"

He set the grocery bags aside, took the kitten from Rin with enraptured thrill. Its delicate body trembling in his hold, frightened. It stayed close to his chest, shielded, but clearly less comfortable with him than with Rin. He gazed at the perfect top of its head stupidly, surprised and slightly embarrassed to find himself rocking as though to put the kitten to sleep.

While he did so, Rin took off her jersey – over her head, making a cloudy mess of her ponytail; handing it to Aizawa. "Wrap her in this. Her fur's so thin, she's probably freezing."

"You'll be freezing too."

Rin only smiled.

They spent an age passing the kitten back and forth, its mewing soon enough coming to be replaced by a warm, faint purr; and when they at last placed the kitten back into the box, a sullen look of regret passing between them, Rin showed no interest in taking her jersey back. Despite the thinness of her shirt's material. Despite the fact that she herself had begun to shiver – perhaps trying to conceal it, her limbs going stiff and her gaze not meeting Aizawa's again, denying it quietly when he asked her if she was cold.

Rolling his eyes at her, Aizawa removed his own jacket. "Here. Take mine."

"No! Don't worry about me. I'm fine."

"Don't be a martyr."

Still crouching by the cardboard box, Aizawa threw the jacket over Rin's back. Her lips were slightly parted, looking ready to speak, and the pale flush persisted across her cheeks. Black did not look good on her, Aizawa decided. Much too hard, much too stolid for such a daintily carved face; even so though, as she wordlessly put it on and zipped it closed, looking almost absurdly small in his clothing, Aizawa felt his chest constrict with uncomfortable pleasure. Saying nothing more, they both stood, taking their grocery bags from the floor and glancing once more to the kitten, wrapped up and cozier than when they'd arrived.

Little white head peeking out from the pink material, the kitten was silent as they left.

* * *

That afternoon, they ate mushroom soup and ohagi by the window. Rin drank wine - red, of course, and dark enough to leave a stain upon her lips. Aizawa drank beer - the 'better' ones Rin had bought for him which, he admitted to himself, actually did make the other stuff he drank seem like shit. They spoke about the kitten, which quickly became a painful topic and was abandoned; and in between lapses of silence, Rin would sigh or shuffle or fidget with her chopsticks.

She still wore Aizawa's jacket; and in spite of the harshness of it against her silky mess of hair, her skin, her smile, Aizawa liked it.

He didn't listen to a lot of what she had to say – not that there was much of it in the first place – because most of that time, he spent looking at her. Really looking at her. Taking in all the peculiarities of her mannerisms and expressions and features, trying to figure out why he had never noticed any of it when she was his student. More than that, when the sun started to set over the cityscape, and hints of lethargic, orange light began to fall in through the window, he willfully studied the ghostly impermanence of it all. Like she was a figment of the imagination, illuminated by the burning glow of an autumnal evening, smiling at him attentively – disconcertingly, for behind that smile was something Aizawa just couldn't place. Something beckoning and unfamiliarly familiar, making his chest ache.

And when he said goodbye to her much later than he should have, when she gave him another Tupperware of the soup and two ohagi skillfully wrapped in tinfoil, he was struck by the warmth of it all. The subtle delight in Rin's manner. The way her face lingered in his mind long after he left – long after he arrived back at the school. What about it, he couldn't put his finger on: the wine stain on her mouth, the perfectly carved shape of her neck and collar bones beneath the material of his jacket.

To his horror, Aizawa realised that in all his one-minded focus, he had forgotten entirely about the matter of her doctor's appointments.


	14. The Babysitter

**A/N: To those of you who are anime-only, spoiler-mention ahead! I love spoilers, and I also really liked this chapter (for some reason), so I'd like you to read it regardless. However, I have bolded the naughty-mention for those of you who are anti-spoiler. So proceed with caution and skip over those three sentences if need be. xD  
**

Chapter 14  
The Babysitter

Aizawa was horrified.

It seemed Class 2A was as well – or perhaps, not so much horrified as they were dumbfounded.

He'd only just finished handing out the marked quiz papers, faced by an anxious silence as his students looked over their results. A silence so pervasive and perfect, in fact, that when Aizawa returned to his place at the front of the class, he could hear with piercing clarity as Kirishima whispered – to no one, to everyone, with choked and wide-eyed confusion – "Aizawa-sensei drew a smiley face on my quiz."

Followed by the equally perturbed voices of his peers, with Kaminari saying, "Even me. _And _Aizawa-sensei wrote 'better luck next time' on mine."

Followed by Jirou, "Mine says good job."

"No fair!" was Ashido's poorly-hushed input. "I didn't get anything nice on my paper!"

And so it should have been the case with everyone – alas, Aizawa could feel stunned eyes being turned his way. All Rin's doing. Aizawa knew he should have checked the papers she marked. Was she trying to ruin him? Was she trying to incite an uproar in his class by doodling cutesy faces and positive affirmation on his quizzes? Dreadful. Absurd. How had logic evaded him like this – to leave that ditsy, daydreaming creature to her own devices?

Still, in spite of his dismay, Aizawa tried to remind himself that this was not the worst that could have happened. So long as she hadn't made a mess of the actual marking, a few sweet comments wouldn't be the end of the world. Wouldn't open the gates of hell.

Only, as Aizawa thought these things, as he tried to console himself in the face of such humiliation, it only got worse.

Much worse.

From the back of the class, he heard Mineta. Insidious. Full of that irksome insinuation. "Aizawa-sensei also wrote on mine. But this isn't sensei's handwriting… It's too pretty," he said, and Aizawa could hear the conniving suggestion in his voice. "Too much like a woman's."

Then came Yaoyorozu, "What are you saying?"

Mineta again, making Aizawa's stomach clench. "Maybe Aizawa-sensei has a girlfriend."

* * *

After that, Aizawa dismissed the class ten minutes early and retreated to the staff room. The secure, silent safety of the staff room, making himself a strong cup of coffee and crawling into the comfort of his sleeping bag. Even then, however, Rin continued to be a persistent presence – her ohagi waiting deliciously on Aizawa's desk, demanding to be eaten; a reminder to call the hospital and to remake an appointment with the doctor, because Aizawa didn't trust Rin to do it herself.

When he pulled his phone from his pocket, shuffling to unzip the sleeping bag and holding the screen before him, there was a missed call. Her? Rin? Aizawa opened the notification and realised he was holding his breath. No. Togata Mirio. And a message: _Hello Aizawa-sensei! Pls give me a call when have a chance. Thx! _

Confused by the dull sense of anticlimax – any message or notification nowadays made Aizawa uptight; it could have been Rin; she could have needed him; it never ended up being her though, and Aizawa would always have wound himself up for nothing – he opened Togata's contact details and dialed.

Three rings. The familiarly good-humored and ever animated voice answered.

'_Aizawa-sensei! How's it going? Thanks for returning my call!'_

"No problem," Aizawa droned. "Do you need something, Togata-san?"

'_Actually, it's about Eri. Work's going to be taking me out of town this weekend, and I was hoping you'd be able to look after her for the day on Friday. You see, I've asked Nejire-chan and Tamaki-kun, but their agencies are keeping them very busy and so they'll only be able to take care of her from Saturday…_'

**Ever since the events of the previous year, Togata still hadn't regained his quirk. Tireless hours had been spent trying tireless strategies. Eri had been working hard too, complying with whatever was asked of her with that innocent will to please, to do anything to make Togata happy. **However, after graduation, Togata had gone on to run the corporate side of the Night-Eye Agency and – to Aizawa's surprise and satisfaction – took on the duty of a full-time caretaker for Eri. A sort of single dad, if you will, with Hado and Amajiki helping out on the side.

Aizawa was also involved. He still played an important part in training Eri's quirk, of course, but had also become an unofficial baby-sitter. Infrequent, but favoured. He'd even grown a small stash of Eri-friendly activities in his apartment: crayons and colouring books and an endless supply of apples. The like.

He was always happy to look after Eri over weekends or evenings.

During the day was a slightly more complicated matter though.

'_If it won't be possible_,' Togata added quickly, remaining jovial, '_I totally understand!_'

"Obviously I'll have classes during the day–" But then again, there was Rin, who had experience with children – she must've, having worked for the Voodoo Agency – and could probably have used the company. Aizawa was sure she could even postpone the mysterious 'stuff' that had supposedly been keeping her so busy in order to do him a small favour. "I could probably make a plan of some sort. I'll get back to you by this evening, Togata-san."

'_No problem. Thanks, sensei! Eri has missed you!_'

They hung up, and with a maudlin flutter in his chest, Aizawa was left thinking about Rin once again. Did she even like children? If she was so fond of small animals like kittens, she may well have been fond of small humans. The fact that she'd drawn 'smileys' and written encouragement for his students seemed a sure-sign that she was. Even if she didn't have any particular fondness for children though, Eri was surely stunning enough to be an exception. After all, even Aizawa had an obvious soft spot for the girl, in all her tragic wholesomeness.

On that note, he called the hospital, where the receptionist took Aizawa's details and – with a threatening request to make sure Rin didn't forget her next appointment – scheduled for her to see the doctor in five days' time.

Then he dialed Rin's number. Waited. Listened to the hollow ring as it continued on without promise of an end, each repeat seeming to grow deeper and duller. Aizawa hung up after a while, dialed again. Still to be met once more by the almost mocking emptiness of static ringing. Ringing. Ringing.

He continued to hold the phone to his ear, nauseatingly aware of the growing tightness in his throat, constantly expecting Rin to pick up at any moment. Beginning to tap his fingers against the desk when she didn't, glaring at the ohagi before him as though they'd contain some hidden message. No answer. Nothing but the flat tone as it continued to ring into oblivion.

It left Aizawa with a terrible sense of anxiety. Unfocused. Quite suddenly without an appetite for the ohagi, and watching his coffee grow cold without the desire to drink it. Where was Rin? There were any number of possibilities: in the shower, taking a nap, dead because of an infection in her wound that hadn't been caught because of her airheaded forgetfulness and Aizawa's negligence. And that wasn't considering the string of Voodoo-related-murders, of which there had apparently still been no news.

Before getting himself into a panic, it would have been more rational to wait a few minutes. He'd make himself another cup of coffee, phone again. And _then_ if she didn't answer–

"Don't look so uptight, Aizawa. You're making me anxious."

Looking up, not having realised how intently he'd been staring at his phone, Aizawa was met by Kayama's gaze as she peeked at him with a twisting smirk over the desk divider. "Who are you so eager to get hold of?" she asked, devious.

"A babysitter for Eri." Which wasn't necessarily untrue, but which also did nothing to ease the invisible grip around Aizawa's insides.

"Oh," Kayama pouted, though more playfully than with disappointment, not seeming entirely convinced. "That's boring."

Aizawa rolled his eyes, and returned to watching his phone screen. Waiting. Feeling a sick sourness in his gut as the time changed. Waiting for Rin to return the call or send a message or–

"Is she a pretty babysitter, at least?"

Aizawa groaned. "Does it matter?"

"Of course it does."

"I don't know."

To which Kayama raised her eyebrows, peering over the rim of her glasses with thirsty intimation at Aizawa. "Young? Nice face?" she prompted. "Legs? Breasts? You're a man, Aizawa. Surely you must notice these things."

"For fuck's sake, Kayama. I said I don't know."

With a surprised widening in her features, Kayama raised her hands in mock-surrender. Oblivious to the vile anxiety which welled somewhere within Aizawa's ribcage. Ignoring the way he clutched the phone more tightly as the time changed once again. She tilted her head, continuing to offer a smirk. "Well sorry ~ I didn't realise you were so much grumpier than usual." She took a bunch of papers from her desk and slinked towards the door, waving over her shoulder as she did so. "Hope you manage to get hold of the babysitter!"

She closed the door, and at the hushed click of it, Aizawa redialed.

There was still no answer.


	15. You Don't Bother Me

Chapter 15  
You Don't Bother Me

By the end of the day, Aizawa was able to think of little else. A handful of hours had passed. He still hadn't heard from Rin, and the fact of it weighed against him with all the vile force of a thousand needles. More so now that he had come back to the apartment, just about having sprinted through the building to reach her, to find no one. Neither asleep nor dead. Only hollow stillness, seeming to gloat over Rin's absence.

Her phone was on the kitchen counter, next to an empty coffee mug and a plate of crumbs. A glaring notification of _5 missed calls_, all of them from Aizawa, all of them unread.

If she'd gone for a walk or to the store, she would have been back now. Would probably have taken her phone. Would maybe have left a note or a sign or _something_ – but then again, why would she have? Aizawa wasn't supposed to be around during the week. Perhaps she'd assumed he wouldn't really care one way or another if she went missing for hours like some teenage girl in her rebellious phase. Was that it? Had she not bothered to contact him because she thought he didn't care? Or was she just so stupidly thoughtless?

There was a certain amount of relief to be had from the fact that she at least wasn't lying dead amongst the furniture.

Although, then again, she could have been lying dead in the street somewhere.

But then again, there was no need to assume things. Not right that moment, anyway.

Aizawa paced through the apartment: from the kitchen, to the bedroom, to the living area, eying out corners and blankets in case Rin were to spontaneously reappear upon a gust of wind. By magic. Out from whatever dimension she'd so casually slipped into like the creature of myth she'd spun herself to be – smiling and faintly flushed, hair a silky mess upon her head. _So sorry Aizawa-sensei! I hope I didn't worry you_. Sweet in her fairy-like indifference. Fucking exasperating.

Twenty minutes passed. Forty. An hour. The light outside turned to the burning orange of evening, and Aizawa called Kayama to ask if she'd take care of the 2A dormitory that night. Something important had come up; he probably wouldn't be back until morning; Kayama pointed out the stress in his voice, asked if he was okay but didn't question any further.

While trying to figure out the password on Rin's phone – no amount of straight or curling swipes seemed to do the trick – Aizawa racked his brains for where she could have gone. Where she could have been taken. Anything she'd said in their last conversations which may have been suspicious or indicative of ominous intention. Of fear. To Aizawa's dismay, he realised he hadn't the faintest idea where he'd start looking. She was still so foreign, still so unknown, that for the first time in a long time, Aizawa had no idea what to do.

He almost collapsed to hear the front door open. Leaped from his place in the kitchen to find Rin in the entranceway. She stood there, clutching a houseplant to her chest, and Aizawa had never been so sick with relief.

"Where the fucking hell were you?" he demanded, more aggressive than he meant to appear. "Why didn't you have your phone?"

"A-Aizawa-sensei…" Rin muttered. She gawked, stiff and seeming to recoil from him, which was when Aizawa noticed how wrong she looked. A greyness to her skin, waxy and ill. A defensive harshness about her limbs. She held the houseplant to herself with clawed, anxious hands, and struggled to speak. "I – You're not supposed to be here – why are you here?"

She was trembling.

Aizawa narrowed his eyes, feeling his insides tumble about themselves in a confusion of fury and relief and a growing sense of concern. He stepped towards Rin, saying more gently, "Where have you been?" Instinctively, he lifted a hand, as though to touch her. "Are you okay?"

"I didn't know you were coming back tonight."

"I wasn't. But then you didn't answer your phone."

Rin stood frozen, mouth opening and closing with words that wouldn't come. Her eyes darted downwards. She swayed slightly. "I'm sorry, sensei. I wasn't – I didn't mean to bother you."

"You didn't bother me," Aizawa said, and it sounded like a hiss. "You made me worried." He tried to take the houseplant – a white pot; fleshy, purple leaves – but Rin turned away. Held it possessively against herself as Aizawa demanded once again, "Where were you?"

"At my apartment," Rin replied, continuing to keep her gaze downturned. "I had to water my plants."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Are you lying to me?"

There was no real reason, no sense of intuition that drove Aizawa to ask her that. It felt almost like protocol. The kind of conversation he would have had with a very young student. What he didn't expect was for Rin to shoot him a look, one of wide-eyed horror and crisis, sharp panic in the stellar green of her eyes. A choked sound echoed from her throat, and Aizawa stared as her skin faded between tinges of grey and green and pink. As though she was about to faint. As though she would be sick.

"I'm not lying," Rin spluttered, and it was in the way she said the word _lying _– wrapping her tongue around it and pulling a face like she'd licked a lemon, gazing at Aizawa with heartbreaking fright – that told him otherwise. Her fingers quivered around the pot of the houseplant. Aizawa watched them for some moments, enthralled by their delicate whiteness, before he noticed the forbidding shadow on the inside of Rin's sleeve. Obscured by the angle. Wrapped precariously close to her body, but undeniable: a darkness quite out of place against the grey of her sweater.

"You're bleeding."

Rin said nothing, but held the houseplant tighter.

"Did you use your quirk?" Aizawa questioned. "You're not supposed to be using it while you recover." He only received a blank stare in return. "Answer me, Hiruma."

"I went to my apartment, Aizawa-sensei," Rin repeated, strange and obscenely pale. She drew a shaky breath, glanced down to her plant and then back to Aizawa, though her expression did a coil which made him think she was perhaps not entirely lucid. "I didn't know you'd – I mean… there was just… I needed to–"

She didn't finish. Up on her toes, Rin dashed past Aizawa in a phantom flurry of her perfume and the rusting scent of blood. Into the living area, around to the bathroom, and when he hurried in behind her she was already doubled over the toilet bowl. Heaving, narrow shoulders tense as she continued to grasp the houseplant in a weak, sagging hold. The splash of water. Aizawa had to resist the curdling in his own stomach. Holding his breath, he crouched next to Rin and scooped her hair around to the back of her neck – realising as he did so that it was the wrong time to appreciate how soft it was – before taking the houseplant. Rin did nothing to resist, didn't even seem to feel his hand as it breezed against hers.

Bitter. Acidic with the sour burning of sickness. It was short, but thoroughly unpleasant – in a half-desperate moment, Aizawa pressed his hand between Rin's shoulder blades and rubbed. Not really sure why he was doing it, but feeling like it was right. Her heartbeat reverberated faintly against his palm, rapid and shocking, and when the spell finally subsided, Aizawa heard a brittle sob like a sniff.

"_Disgusting_," Rin murmured, and dragged her hand over the handle to flush. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"It's fine." Aizawa nudged her in the side, carefully tugged her upwards. "Sit. I'll be right back."

There was a first-aid kit in the bedroom cupboard. After some scrounging, having to draw deep breaths to soothe the onslaught of his own nausea, Aizawa found it and returned to the bathroom. There was a lingering odour of vomit. Rin was crumpled on the toilet seat, gaze averted once again behind a curtain of hair.

"Roll up your sleeves," Aizawa said.

Rin shook her head.

"Do it."

Weakly, apparently in no position to argue, she obliged. Aizawa watched as the material scrunched into soft folds at her elbow, and then eyed the red stains like paint down her arms. Two slices, deft and straight, at the top of each wrist. Shallow enough to not need stitches, but bloody and black. Aizawa ran hot water over a face cloth and dabbed Rin's skin clean, feeling her eyes bore into the top of his head as he did so. In his palm, her wrist was light, delicate enough for him to snap in a single movement. And then there were her scars – angry, mangled flesh in a perfect row down her arm. Aizawa imagined tracing his finger in a zig-zag between them.

He sighed. "I didn't realise watering plants could be such a bloody endeavor."

"It's a pretty extreme sport."

Glimpsing her face, Aizawa was met by a self-conscious smile. Fleeting. Embarrassed. He looked back to her arm, now returned to its translucent whiteness, and pulled a bandage from the first-aid kit. He wrapped it. Secured it. Moved onto the next arm where, beneath the blood, terrible lines of bruising wrapped around her skin. A handprint. "Where did this come from?"

"There was a burglar."

"A burglar?"

"Yes," Rin murmured flatly. "In my apartment. He attacked me, so I defended myself."

A burglar shouldn't have shaken her this much – to make her tremble, and stutter, and hurl up her insides. Shouldn't have made her look at Aizawa the same way she'd looked at him as a teenager, when she'd made a mess of her quirk. Scared. Frozen. Bleeding out without any idea how to stop it. Odd, that he should be remembering that now. "_Was_ it a burglar?" Aizawa began, wanting to be sensitive but at the same time realising the impossibility of it. "Or was it the man who tried to kill you? Could it have to do with your agency?"

As he bandaged her second arm, Rin gave him a sour look. "No. It couldn't have been him." She paused and sniffled, lifting her free hand to wipe at her eyes. "He's dead."

"What?"

"Detective Tsukauchi called me last week. All four of the murder suspects have been found. They're all dead – one's body was half-dissolved in acid. The guy who shot me had had all his fingerprints burned off and all his teeth pulled out. Detective Tsukauchi said they'd been found almost a week before he called, but it was nearly impossible to identify them." Rin pulled a face, something of a grimace.

Aizawa blinked up at her. "Shit."

"I know, right?"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Rin shrugged, and brushed her hair behind her ear – only for it to fall right back alongside her face. "I don't want to bother you with anything, sensei."

"You never bother me," Aizawa said again.

Though he was finished with the cleaning and the bandaging and the like, her wrist lingered in his palm, the feathery weight of it suddenly impossible to ignore. He considered it, her hand, the way he couldn't consider her face, and was once again struck. Thin, blue veins branched beneath her skin like map-lines, disappearing into her fingers with peculiar grace. The freckles like constellations across her knuckles. A porcelain bone structure. Short, manicured nails. Hands like that were made for plucking flowers from French gardens, or for being painted by master artists. Not for digging around amongst alleyways and child-traffickers. Aizawa gently withdrew his hand, cleared his throat. "Do you want tea?"

Raising her eyebrows, already fidgeting with her bandages, Rin said, "I'd prefer wine."

"You just brought up your guts in my bathroom. No alcohol for you."

She pouted playfully, recovering the colour in her face. "So mean."

* * *

When Aizawa came out from the kitchen, Rin was on the couch – swaddled in bedsheets, nothing but her face and a few strands of hair exposed. She hugged the blanket to her body, held it around her head like a monk. Looking awfully stupid but at the same time awfully comfortable, though she stared out at nothing with frowning intensity. Aizawa placed her tea on the coffee table and, relishing the warmth of his own mug, took a seat next to her.

The bedsheets loosened to fall away from Rin's head, and she turned her absorbed gaze onto Aizawa. Messy and sick in her pallor, disconcerted once again. "Sensei," she droned. "Why _are _you here, actually? It's Monday. You need to be at the dormitories."

"Why are you so concerned? Aren't you happy to see me?" he joked, though without any humour in his voice. When Rin's forehead wrinkled, eyes glinting with girlish distress, Aizawa shook his head. "As I said, you weren't answering your phone, and I came to look for you. To make sure you were alright."

"I'm sorry."

"Stop apologizing."

Snaking a hand out from the safety of her blanket-shield, Rin took her tea and drank deeply. Swallowing hard. Almost glaring.

With the sense that he was waiting for something, Aizawa also sipped, immediately feeling stupid for having made himself tea instead of coffee. He didn't even like tea. Especially not the chamomile which had been sitting in his kitchen cabinet for months now. But Rin made no faces, expressed no qualms with what she had been given, and so Aizawa continued to drink in silence, though not without a certain amount of grouchy resentment.

Rin finished long before he did, but did not return the cup to the table. Instead, she ran her fingers along its shell, giving the impression of manic agitation or exhaustion. She'd shiver every now and then. Would sigh thoughtfully; and when at last she spoke, it was hesitant and slow, "Do you need to leave again?"

Aizawa leaned against the back of the couch. "Would you like me to?"

They watched each other, Rin seeming expectant as she considered her answer. Rolling her lips around the words. Tilting her head and looking uncertain. "No," she said at last, and Aizawa felt his spine slacken for the first time that evening. "I'd like you to stay."

"Then I'll stay."

Although Aizawa had a lot of questions – for one, why she had brought a houseplant back to his apartment, and whether or not she would have the stomach to look after Eri that coming Friday – neither of them said anything more, slipping into a silence which over the last few weeks had become comfortable and even calming. He continued to glance at her out from the corner of his eye; every now and then, she'd look at him too, and for a moment an unnamed intimacy would pass between them. She shuffled closer once or twice, trying but failing to be subtle on account of the rustle of the bedsheets.

Inexplicably, Aizawa also leaned his weight towards her. A gentle shifting, until there was the lightest touch of their shoulders: separated by layers of clothing and blanket, so soft that it seemed absurd to notice it at all. Rin sighed next to him; he held his breath for fear of disturbing the delicate solace. Hushed in the guarded closeness of the apartment, sleepy and relieved. Aizawa listened to her breathe, at the same time profoundly aware of his own heartbeat in his ears, and was surprised when he felt her head against his arm. Surprised, indeed, but not unpleasantly so.

She probably hadn't meant to fall asleep like this. Fascinated, Aizawa watched her features – her skin, slightly blushing; the way her lashes fluttered with soft lethargy. He could smell the faint traces of her shampoo. Could feel through the material and linen as her limbs grew limp. For a long time, Aizawa was perfectly still, neither needing nor wanting to disrupt it. Her sleep. The vulnerability of it. His own sense of anxious calm like an anesthetic at the contact.

Shameless, warm to the core, he fell asleep too.

* * *

**A/N: *Screams* **


	16. Paper Cuts

Chapter 16  
Paper Cuts

"So what happened last night?"

"What do you mean?"

"Kayama said you asked her to take over dorm-duty. That you sounded super freaked," Yamada said, and spun on his chair to face Aizawa fully. "What's up with that?"

Earlier that morning, Aizawa had woken to the smell of cooking eggs. The sound of Rin bustling about the kitchen: clanging pans, the kettle boiling. With a certain amount of disbelief, he'd realised that he'd slept through the night – and with even more disbelief, had been delighted when Rin emerged from the kitchen in grey sweatpants and a fresh sweater, not even a ghosting shadow of the night before across her face. They drank coffee. She brought him an omelet stuffed deliciously with spinach and mushrooms. Before her, Aizawa had never eaten so many vegetables in his life.

Neither of them mentioned the supposed burglary, though it balanced itself in Aizawa's mind – somewhere between his reluctance to return to school and his piercing over-awareness of Rin. He'd almost forgotten the drama of it all. Even while she was wrapped in bandages, even being the potential target of a murder conspiracy, Rin seemed to have that effect on him.

Looking away from Yamada, whose curiosity was both intrusive and alarming, Aizawa almost – _almost _– smirked. "A damsel in distress," he said, managing to sound indifferent because the fact of it was true.

Yamada leaned in, wide-eyed behind his shades, speaking in a near-whisper, "Aizawa! Please say you aren't shitting me."

Feigning nonchalance, Aizawa only shrugged.

"_Nah_. You're kidding – I would've been the first to know about any damsel." Yamada paused. "Right?"

"Right."

"Though you are looking pretty spry this morning."

"No, I'm not."

"Yeah, you are." Now it was Yamada's turn to smirk. He leaned back in his chair, threw his arms behind his head in a casual display of amusement. "What's your secret? Yoga? Special diet? You've put on weight. I can see it around your face." To emphasise his point, Yamada slapped his own cheeks playfully. "Did you finally get a cat? Is that what's got you in such a dandy mood, drawing smileys on your students' quizzes and all?"

With renewed venom, Aizawa shot Yamada a glare. "How did you know about that?"

"It's no secret. _Everyone _knows. Midoriya told All Might-san, who then told all of us." Yamada guffawed, attracting curious glances from the other teachers around the room. Thankfully Kayama wasn't there, otherwise she would likely have been on the conversation like a vulture to a carcass. "I mean, it's pretty obvious you have a soft spot for your class – but damn, you may be taking it a little far here. Smiley faces and positive comments… Better be careful, otherwise you might get sued for sexual harassment."

"That's not funny," Aizawa hissed.

To which Yamada replied, "I think it's pretty funny." He leaned forward, hands against his thighs, undeterred and unperturbed as he offered Aizawa a toothy grin. "For reals though, I overheard you asking Kayama to look after the 2As again tonight. Need any help with anything else? I've got your back."

Though it was not something he'd admit out loud – nor would he ever dream of accepting such an offer under such circumstances – Aizawa appreciated the sentiment. Even in amongst the incessant irritation that was Yamada's obnoxious loudness. He sighed loudly, shook his head. "No need," he said. "I'm just going to be tying up some loose ends."

* * *

What Aizawa didn't say was that by 'loose ends' he meant Rin and the burglary. Out from under the influence of her dewy loveliness, more clearheaded away from her domesticity and airy-fairy distraction, Aizawa didn't believe for one moment that she could have been so shaken by something so simple as a burglar.

She wasn't telling him something. Probably a lot of things. That much was obvious – though of course, they were still as good as strangers. Aizawa couldn't exactly expect her to be so confiding.

Nonetheless, by some protective sentiment, he'd stolen Rin's keys that morning and was now heading down the hallway towards her front door. It was perhaps one of the more stalker-esque, less heroic things he'd ever done: this intrusion into the holy domain that was her apartment. However, despite being plagued by the feeling that he was violating an unspoken trust, he was more concerned with the possibility that the things Rin was keeping from him were crucial. That he'd become entangled in a mess much bigger than what he'd originally signed up for and was now responsible for her safety. It seemed arrogant and condescending, but Aizawa couldn't shake the sense that he had to protect her.

And he couldn't do that if he knew nothing.

By this reasoning, he inserted the key into its lock, feeling watched by the darkening evening as it cast shadows through the windows. Across the walls and floors, menacing in their obscurity and silence. _Click_. The door glided open, and Aizawa treaded cautiously into the unfamiliar entrance way. Inhaling deeply. Confronted by the smell of her – that combination of an unknown perfume, and shampoo, and laundry detergent. But more than that was the subtle scent of rusting metal. Copper or iron. Or blood. Not the sharp, painful smell of rot, as with corpses and crime scenes, but distinct nonetheless and thoroughly unappetizing.

Then there was the mess. No longer the feminine stew, but a disaster of mutilated books and shredded paper. So. Much. Paper. An endless expanse of off-white crumples and tears. Aizawa stepped between the disarray, glaring intently. Rin's books, once tenderly piled atop each other, lay scattered across the apartment – open, face-down, butchered beyond recognition. Documents and folders were amongst them, peppered by broken glass from the frames that once hung across the walls. The drawings were gone. Disappeared between the mass.

Rin's houseplants had also been attacked, many of the pots downturned and sulking in their own soil. Leaves were broken. Fortunately, the one with the spoon-shaped lilies had made it out unscathed. Despite this detail though, Aizawa was inexplicably shocked – what sort of burglar would be so ruthless as to harm a woman's houseplants?

No burglar at all, he reminded himself.

In the center of the living area, Aizawa crouched to consider the surrounding papers. He picked up, scanned for anything important, put down again, only coming across a random spread of torn-out pages – _individuals with dependent personality disorder show a pervasive and excessive need to be taken care of_, one read; another was a hand-written recipe for _family-secret tonkatsu pork_; another was an article on some modern artist Aizawa had never heard of. Nothing revealing.

He abandoned his search of the papers. Shamelessly and with a clandestine sense of interest, he made for Rin's bedroom.

There, Aizawa found another mess – only this time, it was more alarming. Fewer papers, though the ones that did lie scattered across the room were torn into sharp, callous angles – some tipped by red. Open drawers, with clothing falling out like organs after disembowelment. And on the bed, where the thick duvet was scrunched and waved, were bloodied handprints. Burning. Ominous against the pale sheets. Much too large to be Rin's. For a moment, Aizawa stared, feeling his stomach clench around itself. Not a burglar. It was clearly not a burglar–

"Did you take my keys, Aizawa-sensei?"

Sweet voice. Tinged with indignation. At the sound of it, Aizawa's pulse halted through his veins. He turned, coming face-to-face with a deeply frowning Rin. Hair up in a pony. Clad in a maroon sweater. She watched him, looking less offended than she did uneasy, body held in a tense stance to attack. At her side, she clasped a blade.

Aizawa raised his eyebrows. "Are you going to stab me if I say yes?"

"I didn't know it was you," Rin said simply and, as though to make a point, threw the blade as one would an empty wrapper. It bounced across the floor, clanging in an echoing sing-song as it spun into stillness. "Why are you here?"

Aizawa pressed his hands into his pockets, tilted his head at her. "I could ask you the same thing."

Rin's brow furrowed endearingly. "It's my apartment."

"You're supposed to be back at mine."

"I'm not under house arrest. I can go where I like."

"So you come back to the place you were supposedly attacked by a burglar?"

To this, Rin said nothing, but pouted slightly and averted her gaze. Lifted a hand to her cheek. Tapped her fingers across her skin. She glanced toward the bed – to the crimson handprints, which perhaps had stained themselves upon her mind as they'd done to Aizawa's – and then away again. The silence wasn't an invitation for interrogation. Even so, Aizawa stepped towards her, coming close enough to see the speckling of freckles across her cheeks, and gestured to the anxious disorder of the space.

"But this wasn't a burglar, was it?" he demanded. "Tell me the truth this time."

Pervasive wordlessness.

"I assume you didn't call the police," Aizawa said.

Rin shrugged – a dainty evasion.

He came closer once more, trying hard to ignore the burn as it spread between his lungs, branching through his chest and into his spine. Though Aizawa didn't allow his eyes to glimpse over the handprints, the curdling mess of the bedsheets, the image of it flashed behind his lids. Vivid. Almost painful. And when he stopped before Rin, lifting his hand to graze her wrist – jolted by the contact of it – what was he doing? – he questioned quietly, "Did they hurt you?"

Wide eyes, stunned and confused, met his. Rin's lips parted, closed again, and then with the moist click of her tongue at the roof of her mouth, she sighed. "No," Rin said. "That – that's not what happened."

"Then what?" Aizawa's fingers, though he considered pulling them away, lingered against hers.

A twitch. A gentle press of the back of her hand into his palm, fleeting and impersonal. So subtle, like hovering against the still surface of water. Yet, with the force of small explosions, it left hundreds of pinpricks across Aizawa's skin. He watched Rin's lips, willing her to speak, one half of him wanting her to pull away because of the strangeness of it all, the other half wanting to pull her closer. When at last she did withdraw her hand, it almost made Aizawa sick.

Rin wrinkled her nose, pouting like an upset child. "I'm really sorry, Aizawa-sensei. But you shouldn't be here," she said. "This is none of your business."

To which Aizawa narrowed his eyes. "Of course it's my business."

"No. It's not."

"You're staying in my apartment," Aizawa reminded her. "I'm supposed to be taking care of you. That makes all of this my business."

"Well then," Rin lifted her chin, glaring with quiet resolve, "I'll leave."

Neither of them tore their eyes away, an exchange of unspoken ultimatums passing between them. Despite managing to maintain a stern façade, Aizawa could feel his insides plunge at the threat of it. He didn't want her to leave; whether from his sentimental sense of responsibility or a newly discovered desire to keep her safe, he wasn't entirely sure. What's more, he couldn't exactly tell Rin that. Of course, it wasn't rational. More than that though, she wasn't his to keep - why did that bother him? Aizawa cleared his throat, straightened his shoulders. "Don't be so rash. You're upset."

"_You're _upset," Rin spat. She may as well have stuck her tongue out at him. But then, features crumpling like dry flowers, tears welled in the corners of her eyes. For a moment, she continued to glare at Aizawa – however, as one silver streak slithered down her cheek, she spun away and stomped out, leaving Aizawa confounded by the heavy throb of his pulse in his ears.

* * *

She sat on her kitchen floor, huddled into a ball against the sharp corner of the cupboards. Still for a long time, not lifting her eyes to Aizawa as he lowered himself to sit across from her. He realised the stupidity of it, how childish it must have seemed for him to be pandering to her sulks. At the same time though, so close to her in the cool, tiled space, yellow light floating in from the living room as she drew slow breaths, Aizawa didn't mind it. Not at all.

"You don't have to tell me anything," he said, watching attentively as her fingers tensed and relaxed over her sleeves. How odd, to want to touch them again. "But you have to answer one question."

Rin leaned her head against her knee, looking at him at last. Tired, anxious eyes.

"Are you okay?"

Like a phantom across her lips, Rin smiled faintly. "You never used to ask so many questions, Aizawa-sensei."

Aizawa shrugged. Waited.

"What changed?"

The question took him by surprise – or was it the tenderness, the affectionate hush with which Rin spoke? With a gossamer air of expectancy, she lifted her head, allowed her gaze to meet Aizawa's in a disarming intimacy. Not shying away, Aizawa replied with considered slowness, "I don't know." And it was true. He didn't know for sure, though he had his suspicions.

Contemplatively, Rin hummed. She pressed her hands to the ground, shuffled closer so that her feet could have touched Aizawa's.

Leaning in towards him, ponytail hanging over her shoulder in a platinum curling of silk, she said, "It wasn't a burglar in my apartment, sensei. You were right about that. But they weren't trying to kill me either." She rubbed a hand over her forearm, and briefly, Aizawa watched as she did so, committing to memory the fine undulation of the bones beneath her skin. "This person was trying to get information – you see, there's something very important that I know. Or that I think I know. I'm not sure yet. When I came here yesterday, this person was going through all my things, which is why everything looks like a warzone."

Despite the loaded multitude of undertones, Aizawa was surprised by Rin's sincerity. He shifted his weight, terribly uncomfortable upon the cold tiles but not wanting to break away. "You said they attacked you."

"They did," Rin nodded. "But it wasn't a serious attack – you know, like they were only trying to scare me." She paused, biting her lip in thought, and then added, "They _did_ scare me."

Which explained the way she'd been acting the previous night. Aizawa swallowed hard against the urge to press his hands to her cheeks. Those smooth, perfectly coloured cheeks. "What sort of information were they looking for?" he questioned. "Does it have to do with Doctor Voodoo? With your agency?"

"This is a lot more than one question, Aizawa-sensei." Rin raised her eyebrows, the luminosity of her eyes glimmering. "But yes. It has to do with Doctor Voodoo."

"What about him?"

"I can't tell you."

Aizawa huffed. "Well can you tell the police?"

"No. And you can't tell them anything that I've just said either."

"Why not?"

"You just can't. _Please_." With deliberate softness, she wrapped one hand around Aizawa's – clutched it, more like, her fingers trembling against his skin, sending a thrilling surge of dizziness to Aizawa's head. "I know it's probably frustrating, and I'm really sorry. But this is something I've been trying to figure out for a long time now and I just–" Rin squeezed, and it seemed to be more for her sake than Aizawa's. "I don't want to depend on you."

She let go of his hand, and Aizawa sighed. All things considered, she had already given him sheer amounts of information compared to what he'd known before. Still, to be cut off so suddenly, for the walls to go back up around her – it left a terrible simmer in Aizawa's stomach. He wanted to feel her hand again. Wanted to stroke her hair, touch her, _something_. He wanted to know so much more, but it was clear in the way Rin sank back into silence that the conversation was over.

As though to rub salt in the wound, she tilted her head, gave a small smile. "Can we change the subject?"

Aizawa narrowed his eyes. Such infuriating sweetness. "Fine," he said. So long as they could stay like this for a little while longer. "Do you like children?"


	17. Eri (I)

Chapter 17  
Eri (I)

At the question, Rin raised her eyebrows, making a noise somewhere between a choke and a giggle. Aizawa didn't realise the oddity of it until the words were already out his mouth – because what he had meant to ask was whether or not she'd _mind looking after a child_: a much less intrusive, much less uncomfortable version of what was actually said – and now, under Rin's endearing question mark of an expression, he struggled to find the language to clarify that fact. Aizawa felt his eyes widen and narrow, as though in confusion, and a blank sound like an _uh _welled itself in his throat.

Brushing a stray wisp of hair behind her ear, Rin smiled coquettishly. "I love children," she said and blushed, seeming embarrassed by her answer. "I actually adore them, though that's not exactly a first-date kind of question."

"I know. I'm sorry." Aizawa could have rolled his eyes at himself, choosing for now to ignore the anecdote. He pressed his palm to his nape, looked away briefly. "What I actually wanted to know was whether you'd be able to do me a favour – I need a babysitter, and I–"

"A babysitter for your class? Like a substitute?" Rin cocked her head.

"Lord, no." The thought of throwing Rin to that disastrous mass of overly-active trouble-magnets was enough to make Aizawa sick. "For a little girl named Eri."

"Eri?"

"Yes. She was rescued about a year ago from a break-away group of yakuza, and I've been helping train her quirk–"

"I know who she is~" Rin just-about squealed. There was a weird glimmer across her features, a new and charming brightness about her eyes – quite the same as when they'd come across that kitten on the Autumnal Equinox. She leaned forward, pressing her hands to Aizawa's knees, and beamed. "There was a lot of talk about her at the agency, and I saw her the few times she was on the news," Rin explained, self-consciousness now gone. "She looked like a fairy!"

The irony was not lost on Aizawa.

While Rin babbled on – _I was wondering what happened, I mean, who was supposed to be looking after her. What a brave little girl! And such a cutie, from what I've seen! _– he found himself gazing at her stupidly. By such thrilled focus, it was clear she didn't feel through her chest the same stifling pressure as Aizawa did. A pressure which only grew the longer he watched her. The excitable curve of her mouth. The tensing of the tendons in her neck. Her face close enough for him to see the slight tinge of white-gold in her eyes' greens. All of it startlingly pretty; all of it setting Aizawa's stomach in knots.

"Were you going to ask me to look after her sometime?" Rin grinned, leaning closer, jolting Aizawa back to reality as she did so.

"What?"

"Eri. You said you needed a babysitter?"

"Oh. Right." He focused his attention on looking her in the eye, trying hard not to be bothered with the gentle weight of her hands on his legs. "Would you mind?"

"Not at all~!" Rin cried. "I'd love to."

* * *

To this suggestion, Togata had no objections. Frankly, he even seemed excited by the idea – apart from Hado Nejire, who already wasn't around all that much on account of hero work and planning her wedding, Eri didn't have many female figures to look up to. At least, not on a personal level. As such, Rin would be a refreshing new acquaintance. Even if they'd only be spending the briefest time together. Even if it wasn't immediately clear how quickly Eri would warm up to her: a very hit-and-miss situation, all things considered.

And so, that Thursday evening, Togata dropped Eri at the dormitories. Cat-themed backpack slung over her shoulders, silvery hair flung up in ponytails and tied haphazardly with ribbons – it was clear Togata was experimenting with his styling skills again – she tip-toed across the path towards Aizawa, grinning in between uncertain glances. Sugary sweet in a red coat and boots to match – _like the leaves! _she'd probably say. Clutching Togata's hand with no apparent intent to let go; and when it was time to part ways, Eri's arms lingered around him in a hesitant hug goodbye.

Through the ten minute drive to the apartment, she was comfortably talkative. "I've learned how to skip, and Mirio-kun is going to teach me how to ride a bike," she said, swinging her legs against the backseat. "And I've made a friend at school. His name is Kota."

"That's good, Eri-chan."

"The teachers said we're going to have a picnic in the forest next week. We're going to hunt for mushrooms." When Aizawa glanced into the rearview mirror, Eri was watching him, crimson eyes wide and pleased with the conversation. "I've never had mushrooms before."

"Maybe you can ask Rin-chan to make you mushroom soup. She cooks nicely."

"Can Rin-chan make candy apples?"

"I don't know. Although I'm pretty sure she can make anything," Aizawa said, and the way it came out sounded rather too wistful for his liking.

Behind him, Eri hummed quietly, turning to gaze out the window at the warm-coloured scape of street and trees.

Aizawa had to hold her hand when they climbed the stairs to the apartment. Halfway up, she got distracted by a maple leaf that had blown in through the window – crouching down to stare, not venturing to pick it up for some moments lest she disturb something unspoken, she cooed over its fiery colour against the still-green veins. When at last she did pinch the leaf between her teeny fingers – gently, like taking a butterfly from a petal – she held it up for Aizawa to see, as though it were the most marvelous thing in the world. She held it to her chest the rest of the way up.

An inexplicable anxiety beat between Aizawa's ribcage. The scrape of his key in the lock was loud and nauseating, somehow slow. Until then, it had seemed like a good idea to leave Eri with Rin – Aizawa had seen no rational reason not to. However, now faced with the reality of it, doubt nestled itself in his mind. What if Rin didn't like Eri? Worse still, what if Eri didn't like Rin? In all her feather-headed ways, Rin could kill this child: could leave the stove on and burn the apartment down with them inside, or could put too much sugar in Eri's tea and poison her. More ominously, Rin could have been attacked again. _What if–? _The question hung itself before Aizawa's vision like a glaring, red pain.

When he opened the door, Eri following curiously behind with one hand still in his, Rin was on the couch. Waiting with coffee cup in hand – a change from the usual wine. Fluffy socks and shorts, hair freshly washed.

With all the striking fairness of a white dahlia, she grinned at Aizawa, making his pulse plummet.

She breezed over from the couch, crouching down to be eye-level with Eri and seeming to forget entirely that Aizawa was there at all. "You must be Eri-chan," Rin said, smile only widening. "I've heard lots about you ~ I'm Rin. You can call me whatever you like." She gestured to the maple leaf. "What do you have there?"

Uncertainly, Eri lifted it, glancing to Aizawa for affirmation – to which he responded by squeezing her hand – and then back to Rin. "I found it on the stairs."

"It's pretty." Rin leaned her head to the side. "Almost the same colour as your eyes."

"It is?" Eri looked intently at the maple leaf, little brow wrinkling in delicate thought. Then, like a star, her features burst into a show of exquisite excitement. "It _is_!"

In Eri's charmed distraction, Rin tilted her face up towards Aizawa. Lips curling strangely at the corners, sylphish features open in a smug look of delight. Infectious lightness. Quite beguiling. Meeting her gaze, Aizawa lowered himself next to Eri, gently touching the curve of her back beneath her bag. "Eri-chan," he said, and at last tore his eyes away from Rin's. "Are you okay to stay with Rin-chan?" It was weird, saying her name like that. "I'm sure you'll have fun."

Apparently in a happy confusion at the sight of two adults bent before her, Eri nodded slowly and turned her attention onto Rin once again. "Do you like to draw?" she questioned, voice chime-like and sweet.

"I do. It's one of my favourite things."

"Mirio-kun bought me new colouring pencils. So we can use them to draw together."

Rin leaned in, speaking in quick, low tones as though there were a secret to be shared. "That sounds like a wonderful idea."

With one more determined bop of her head, Eri slipped her hand from Aizawa's, looking to him with an excitable glimmer. "I'm going to put my bag away now," she said and scurried off. "I also need to do a number one! Don't go before I'm finished, ojisan*!"

Neither of them making any move to straighten themselves, Aizawa and Rin watched Eri disappear around the corner in a bustle of girlish familiarity. In general, she either took a liking to someone immediately or not at all – and in the case of Rin, it seemed Eri had no qualms. So much was clear in the blossomy little smiles, and the gradual loosening of her grip on Aizawa's hand before she'd let go completely. Not to say he'd had any particular expectations of this first meeting, but Aizawa was relieved.

He stood and Rin followed suit, her knees making a quiet cracking sound as she did so.

"She's even cuter than I thought she'd be," Rin said softly.

"Yes. Eri-chan's very sweet." Out from the corner of his eye, distractions temporarily removed, he considered her more carefully. Noting the smooth bandiness of her legs, the crumpled look of her clothing as though she'd slept in them. And the smell. Of her shampoo – why did he pay so much attention to it? – and warmth like tousled bedsheets. _Oh_. With something of an ache through his chest and spine, Aizawa wondered what it would be like to press his face into his shoulder. Into her hair.

"Are you okay, Aizawa-sensei?"

"Perfectly."

"Oh," Rin grinned airily. "Sorry. You just looked weird."

In the kitchen, while Eri did her 'number one', Aizawa ran over all the child-care necessities with Rin. Eri liked his sleeping bag, so he'd left it in the bedroom cupboard for her. Togata's number, in case of emergencies, was on the tag inside her backpack. Rin had to promise to keep her phone on and with her at all times, and to send Aizawa updates until he returned the next evening – _Promise me. If at any point I call, and you don't answer immediately, I __**will **__call the police_. There was paper for drawing, hair things at the back of the bathroom cabinet. Eri's bedtime was eight thirty and not a minute later.

To all of this, Rin only seemed to listen half-heartedly, a far-off glaze about her as she nodded and hummed and said at perfectly timed intervals _Yes, Aizawa-sensei. No, Aizawa-sensei_.

And when he left down the corridor, Eri waved goodbye to him, holding Rin's hand as though they hadn't only just met.

* * *

**A/N: This was another one of those chapters that I thought would be better to break into two. Be prepared for some mega Eri-Rin cuteness in the next one. Even better, in the chapters that follow, you can expect the Aizawa-Rin fluff that we've ALL been waiting for… ;) Follow, favourite and review to make my day! Xxx**

**( * Ojisan is the Japanese way of referring to one's uncle, as far as I understand )**


	18. Eri (II)

Chapter 18  
Eri (II)

When he'd asked for frequent updates, Aizawa had expected a message every few hours. Just to let him know that Eri was still alive and that, by extension, Rin was too. Maybe also to let him know that they were having a nice time together, if Rin was feeling generous with information.

What he hadn't expected was for his phone to shriek throughout the morning. Notifications. Another one. Another one. Naturally, it had attracted a series of questioning stares from Class 2A – perhaps more so because of the fact that, with the way his phone seemed to burn in his pocket, Aizawa checked it immediately _every time_ it made a sound. Sometimes even when it didn't.

Because behind every notification was Rin sending, not simple messages, but photos: photos of Eri eating pancakes for breakfast, of Eri drawing, of Eri as she clutched pillows and blankets to herself like some abominable snow-child – for the sake of building a fort, Rin had clarified. Eri's nails painted with the same pastel pink as Rin's. Both of their feet in oversized socks striped and dotted like candy wrappers. Watching cartoons. More drawing.

All of this, and it was only lunch time.

Now, for the umpteenth time that day, Aizawa stared at his phone screen in quite the same way as he would at messy handwriting.

Coffee stewed on the desk alongside an unopened jelly packet. He could hear Yamada down the hall, greeting students.

The most recent photo was of both Eri and Rin. Giggly, childish smiles. Powder smudged across their cheeks and foreheads – flour, assumedly, since the message that came with it said, '_We're making apple pie!_'and was decorated by an unnecessary amount of apple emojis. Eri was still in her pajamas, holding a plastic bowl and shoving her shoulder against Rin's. Rin's hair was loose, and she wasn't wearing a jersey. On the contrary, there was a lot of skin to be seen – collar bones like balconies; a milky white chest; smooth shoulders with scars poorly concealed by strappy sleeves. Not that Aizawa was looking _that _closely, of course.

Nonetheless, he did gaze at the photo for a long time. At Eri's wide stretch of a grin, the distilled elation across her face as she pressed herself into the view of the camera. And also – with a pleasure so vivid it sent near-painful spells of tension through Aizawa's ribcage – at Rin. At everything about her and nothing at all: the crinkle of her nose as she grinned awkwardly through the screen, bemused and self-conscious. A little less inaccessible, somehow.

Aizawa sighed. Eyes lingering over the screen, he saved the photo.

* * *

Though he tried to ignore it, a sense of blurred urgency rushed him back to the apartment that afternoon. Once again, he'd had nothing to contribute to the staff meeting regarding the need for new teachers – although this could have been because his mind wandered to things wholly unrelated to school rather than because of any actual lack of opinion – and so he'd managed to leave in a dash before Kayama or Yamada could set their Friday-sights on him.

He walked fast, cold air slicing against his face in swift waves, and he took the stairs to the apartment two at a time. Pulse pounding through his veins, he had to stop outside the door to steel himself, light-headedness and distraction having made a mess of him. Against the distant rumble of rush-hour traffic and the muted clatter of neighbours going about their business, no sound came from inside the apartment. Something of a relief as Aizawa caught his breath, but perhaps also a disappointment. After having egged himself through the day upon a flighty sense of expectation, such silence seemed anticlimactic. Maybe also concerning? Were women and girls supposed to be so quiet?

Aizawa didn't understand this rush, in all its irrational and overstated confusion. This persistent restlessness like an organ's echo through empty churches, like springtime ghosts, always carried upon his fingertips and at his brain's edges. Because of Rin? Because of her butterfly-elusiveness? Or was it the way she slowly seemed to be coming into a rich familiarity? Slow, lazy weekends. Cups of coffee and the domesticity Aizawa never realised he'd needed. All of it accumulated to an unspoken but undeniable fondness.

Strange, because Rin was so young and he was once her teacher and he hadn't ever been so possessed by someone as he was by her.

Stupid too, because none of it was very logical. Everything he did in her presence felt like a clumsy force of improvisation. No power dynamic existed between them anymore, and Aizawa could only float helplessly alongside Rin's oblivious affections. Subtle but distinct – and it didn't seem like she was even _trying _to be so very… enthralling. Which only made it so much more frustrating.

Something of a groan escaped him, and he unlocked the door.

Aizawa stepped into the apartment to be greeted by a warm hush and the smell of baking.

Papers lay across and around the coffee table, scattered with a rainbow-multitude of pencils and wax crayons. The couch had been stripped of its pillows, now hidden amongst the monstrosity of blankets, towels, sheets – probably anything Rin and Eri could get their hands on – that lay over each other in a material fortress, concealing what was once the table by the window. Aizawa peered inside the kitchen: washed dishes, a half-eaten pie of perfect gold on the counter. Two glasses stood next to it, one still half-full with what looked to be orange juice.

Upon closer inspection of the coffee table, Aizawa found an obscene amount of Eri's doodles. Cats and flowers and outlines of her hand. A book with a tatty black cover sat closed on the edge of the table. Rin's – Aizawa had seen her bent over it with lead pencils a number of times now.

And under the table-blanket-fort, Eri was cocooned in the orange sleeping bag: lids shut and cheeks lightly flushed, arms above her head in a satisfied and exhausted splay. She drew slow breaths. There was a story book open across her stomach. And next to her, in a half-moon curve, Rin was equally as fast asleep, her face pressed to the material of Aizawa's sleeping bag. One hand clutching at it like a lifeline, the other resting against Eri's – fingers as gently tangled as loose vines. She wore sweatpants and a grey vest, no jersey to conceal the litheness of her arms nor the jagged pattern of scars.

As he stared, having crouched down for a better view beneath the table, Aizawa struggled to believe the perfection of it.

Indeed, he wasn't exactly the type of person to think of anything at all as being 'perfect'. However, _this _– Rin and Eri cuddled up to his sleeping bag beneath a blanket fort – came pretty close.

He tugged the sleeping bag ever so slightly to cover Eri's feet, poking out like teeny white buds; and then, with a mesmerized clarity of purpose, he ran his fingers over Rin's ankle. Obscene and absurd. Perhaps violating, but at the same time – how could he not? Like touching marble, such a demure flash of skin was thoroughly inviting in its smoothness, with all its odd undulations of bone.

Rin stirred. Aizawa retreated to the kitchen, swiping from the coffee table her sketch book as he did so.

* * *

The most recent drawings were, naturally, of Eri: photo-esque shadings of her elfin face in all sorts of positions and expressions. Aizawa had ogled these before being dumbstruck when he turned the page; dumbstruck, because Rin had drawn him too. Two pages worth of him, actually, and with such impressive attention to detail it was almost disconcerting. Pencil scratches of stubble. Hard lines for features, a strong black smudge of hair. Always frowning, always preoccupied with something apparently very serious – and always looking away.

Rin had been quick to shut the book whenever Aizawa was around, whether he'd made any sudden moves or had simply glimpsed her way. She'd smile at him sheepishly, like a small dog caught chasing its tail, and then would slowly curl back over her work when Aizawa happened to look away again.

Now he knew why.

The kettle finished boiling, and as Aizawa made himself coffee he could hear feather-light footsteps crossing the apartment. Ever closer, ever more confident – when he turned towards the doorway, coffee cup in hand, Rin was there. Pale green jersey pulled back over her body, face bleary and tiredly flushed as she smiled at him. "You're back earlier than usual, Aizawa-sensei," she said, and touched a hand to her cheek. "We were going to tidy up~"

"It's fine." Aizawa took another cup – one of the ones Rin liked to use – from the cabinet. "Do you want coffee?"

"_Please_."

While he went about making the second cup of coffee, Rin slid up close to him. There was that smell again, of warmth and sleep. She leaned against the counter, staring up at Aizawa with a hazy grin and that mussed cloud of hair. So cute. She was really fucking cute after having just woken up, and she was right there next to him, and her fingers touched his when he passed her the coffee and just – well, _fuck_. It was excruciating.

She caught sight of her sketch book on the counter, open to the pages of Aizawa's face (weird, to put it that way). Lips tightening, cheeks deepening to a richer pink, she blinked once. Twice again. Saying nothing. Brittle under the pressure of the silence, Aizawa looked back to the book. "You're very good," he said. "Though you could have just asked me to pose for a photo or something, if you wanted my face that badly."

Startled, clearly not having expected this sort of response, Rin raised her eyebrows. Pulled a face. "Asked you to…?"

"A joke. That was a joke."

"Oh~" Still awkward, her lips peaked and curved in a choked attempt at a grin. "Right. Funny."

"But you do have a talent. You make me look…" Aizawa considered his words – tenderly crafted? Aesthetically pleasing? Was there some sort of artistic jargon he should have been using? "A lot better looking than I really am."

"Not really," Rin said, and brought the coffee up to her lips to speak into the cup. "I only draw what I see. You're just attractive."

"What?"

"What?"

They stared at each other.

Somehow, it didn't seem humanly possible for a conversation to have gone amiss so quickly. They hadn't even gotten through half a sip of coffee yet – internally, Aizawa moaned, half-wishing the kitchen floor would swallow him up entirely.

Clearing her throat, Rin rub her free hand against her forearm. "Did you – uh – like the ones of Eri?"

"Very much," Aizawa said. Too enthusiastically. "It looks like you two had a nice day."

At last, Rin relaxed into a dewy look of glee, and the stifling sense of embarrassment began to dissolve. Wide-eyed, tilting herself towards Aizawa, she cooed, "Oh, yes! It was _such _a nice day! Eri and I both woke up super early and couldn't fall back asleep, so we made pancakes…" And so Rin went on about all the things Aizawa already knew they'd done, and he listened with a haphazard attempt at attentiveness. Of course though, sidetracked as he was by simply looking at her, he heard none of it. Not that she seemed to notice. "You should try the apple pie!"

In an elated bustle, Rin set aside her coffee and took two clean plates from the drying rack. She sliced the remaining pie, dished pieces for both herself and Aizawa – and naturally, it was delicious, even if Aizawa had never been much of a fan of pastries.

He told her about his day. At some point, after having finished his coffee and the pie and having put the dishes back in the sink, he managed to position his arm in a careful curve around her back as she leaned against the counter. She, in turn, asked him about his students, about the school – _Do you like being a teacher? How did you become one? Do you want more pie? _– and eventually, without either of them making a show of realising it (though Aizawa's heart rose into his throat with steady sharpness), she was leaning into his side. Innocent softness. Face beaming up at his as though being so close wasn't a shameless intrusion. A perplexing blur of boundaries.

"Should I wake Eri?" Rin eventually asked, voice lowering into a whisper. She tilted her head. Lips pink and thin and kissable. "She's been asleep for a while now."

A perplexing blur of boundaries, indeed. Not one Aizawa particularly wanted to stop. He shook his head. "No." Brought his arm carefully around Rin's body, touching his fingers to the fuzz of her jersey as he moved nearer. "She can sleep a little longer."

Sensing that something delicately established might slip – a slim, crucial veil separating the moment from their stymied former selves – neither of them said anything, but watched the other. Their faces came close. Uncertain and agonizing as Rin's eyes fluttered close and Aizawa felt his chest constrict in eager anticipation. The curve of her waist beneath his hand. His lips so close to hers he could feel her breath slither by–

"Rin-chan?" Eri. "Rin-chan!" Followed by a mad dash of footsteps across the apartment.

Rin sprang away. So did Aizawa, and when Eri rounded the corner into the kitchen, features widening in delight as she caught sight of them both, they all stood in a skew circle of awkward bemusement. Eri, glittery in her sleepy obliviousness. Aizawa, heart pounding in his ears, quite unsure of what just happened – or nearly happened. He glanced to Rin. She looked away from him, face an image of blotchy pinks and whites.

"Hello, ojisan!" Eri cried, swishing forth to clutch Aizawa's hands.

Crouching to be level with those excitable eyes of crimson, Aizawa squeezed her fingers in greeting. "Did you have fun today?"

A pleased nod. "So much fun. I made you a drawing, ojisan ~ you _must _come see." Eri tugged with enthusiasm, emphasising the importance of the matter. "It's of you and me and Rin-chan. And also Rin-chan's cat. He's all black and his name is Blink! It's a weird name."

By this, Aizawa had to swallow against his discomfort. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Rin cringe. Once again though, Eri continued to be fondly unfazed – she escorted Aizawa out the kitchen, Rin following behind in a sweet, silent skulk. Doing nothing to stop Eri as she babbled on about their day, as she told Aizawa exactly the same things Rin had told him just minutes earlier. "And after we finished building the fort, we took a small tea break, which was when Rin-chan painted my nails. See? Oh! Ojisan, do you know Rin-chan has lots of scars - just like me?"

* * *

**A/N: Oh, the foiled fluff! Better luck next chapter? Follow, favourite and review to find out~**


	19. The Mouse's Word

Chapter 19  
The Mouse's Word

When Hado and Amajiki arrived that evening, their eyes went wide at Rin – at Eri's excitement over her, as well as at the strangeness of seeing a woman almost their age so comfortable in Aizawa's apartment. She still looked a mess, after all, in her sweatpants and jersey and unbrushed hair. Vampirically peculiar, which Hado pointed out with the same ditzy thoughtlessness as ever – "You're so pale! Are you sick? Do you always look like that? You have such smooth skin though. Please tell me the secret. Is it because you don't wear make-up? I want to have the same kind of glow for Tamaki and my wedding. Aizawa-sensei is invited, of course! Are you going to be his plus one?"

To which Rin gave a hard smile, sounding stifled as she offered the simple reply, "You ask a lot of questions."

After they said goodbye, waving to Eri as she gazed back at Rin with a regretful pout, the weekend fell into a superficial hush. Neither Rin nor Aizawa brought up whatever it was that happened in the kitchen. They drank coffee in the sleepless hours of the morning; spoke about inanities; all the usual parts of the lethargic, cozy routine they'd established. Through it all though, with a thrown undercurrent which made her seem restless, Rin tip-toed around Aizawa as one would around a foreign animal: either not wanting to disturb him, or already thoroughly disturbed herself. And of course, the weight of it slammed against Aizawa every time she… well… every time she did anything really.

To say it was awkward wasn't quite right. It was vaguer than that, almost pleasant and also agonizing – something like waiting for a pot to boil over. Self-torturous, really. Because over the course of the weekend, Aizawa stewed with continuous longing over how easy it would have been to repeat the whole scenario, Rin's face close to his once again and no Eri (wonderful as she was) to disturb it this time.

On Saturday, he took Rin to her doctor's appointment, where her stitches were removed and then promptly replaced. The wound hadn't healed properly. It would likely take another few weeks for it to do so. The doctor scowled as he sternly informed Aizawa that it was likely because Rin was overexerting herself – by what activity, it wasn't clear, but Aizawa needed to keep a closer eye and-or Rin needed to find a more _relaxed _distraction. A desk job, or knitting, or something.

_Or something_.

On Sunday, at 3A.M., she glided through into the living area where Aizawa was awake and marking. Her usual pajamas, thickly-socked feet. A grumpy pout as she brought coffee and then sat across from him at the table. "Can I help mark?"

"Only if you promise not to doodle faces on my students' work."

With a sugary, sleepy smile, she took a page from the pile. At times, lightly, her foot would ghost against Aizawa's. Past his ankle. Up his calf. Only for the touch to disappear again as though it had never been there at all. And perhaps it was only an illusion, spurred by their silence and obscured by the dull burn of the living room light. They drank more coffee when they were finished marking, and in a murmuring, wistful tone – as though to no one, or to unseen listeners from another realm – Rin said, "I would love to be a teacher."

* * *

Principal Nezu's office always smelled of smoke. It was also excessively minimalistic – and though this made for a profound sense of professionalism, the stark glow of white walls and pristinely ordered shelves were also clinical enough to be unsettling. Indeed, behind the desk that was much too large, sipping on tea from a Royal Albert tea set, Nezu played the role of a mastermind (good, evil or otherwise) well.

"This is a nice surprise, Eraser Head. I don't often get visitors at teatime," Nezu said, watching Aizawa with calm and beady-eyed friendliness. He offered biscuits from a plate probably worth more than some organs. Aizawa refused, having already guzzled down the leftover pie Rin had given him, and Nezu took a biscuit for himself, tapping it deftly against the rim of his teacup. "What is it you wanted to speak with me about? Is all well with your students?"

Aizawa sat cross-legged in his seat, squinting against the white light as it streamed through the window and burned his eyes. "My class is fine," he said. "They're not what I wanted to talk about though. You've mentioned in the last few meetings that UA is looking to recruit new staff members."

Ears pricking upwards, Nezu's customary smile widened with interest. "Ah, yes. With Hound Dog taking over matters of security completely, I'm particularly interested in finding a new guidance counsellor to replace him. A few extra hands will also be welcome with the dorm system – though certainly, you're already aware of that." Nezu sipped his tea, gave a satisfied sigh. "But of course, finding someone who is compatible with the counselling role has proven quite a challenge. It seems pro-heroes nowadays can't relate to teenagers like they used to. You know, my theory is that–"

"That's why I'm here," Aizawa interrupted quickly, not all too eager to sit through one of Nezu's monologues. "I might be able to suggest someone for the position."

"Oh?"

"Yes. Hiruma Rin." Rin didn't know he was doing this. Until that morning, Aizawa hadn't known he'd be doing it either – but after brooding over what she'd said, and after having received a text from Togata which said that Eri would not stop singing Rin's praises, it seemed like the only reasonable thing to suggest her for the job. It was a coincidental perk that having her work at the school would also bring her markedly closer to him. "She goes by the hero name Lady Chi."

Nezu was quiet for a moment. Uncharacteristically so. He balanced his cup between his paws, considering Aizawa with a flatly smiling look of questioning. "Ah," he breathed. "I remember Hiruma-chan well. Such a clever girl, that one." Nezu leaned in, black eyes murky and full of something Aizawa couldn't place. "You're in contact with her?"

"Well," Aizawa brought his hand to his nape, "She's been staying at my apartment for the last few weeks. She was shot in the chest and needed someone to help out during her recovery. I was apparently her only emergency contact. Still."

"How _interesting_." Another sip of tea. "Dreadful, what's happened with her agency – I've been following the situation through my various sources, you see. I assume her hero license has been suspended for the duration of the investigation."

"That's right. Although that's only precautionary, at this stage. The police don't suspect her of anything."

"Of course." Nezu placed down his cup and saucer, leaning toward Aizawa with his paws in front of his face. "Naturally, it would be quite unusual for us to hire a staff member who can't perform hero duties. Though that should only be temporary. And with the situation surrounding the Voodoo Agency, it would of course pose potential risks to our students. What do you think, Eraser Head? Why do you think Hiruma Rin should be given the job?"

Risks, indeed. But then again, there was always risk involved in bringing on new staff members – background checks nowadays were very easy to dodge, with the right resources – and besides the situation at Rin's apartment some days ago – which apparently wasn't an attack on her so much as it was on her belongings – no attempts had been made on her life since the hospital. Either it really had been a coincidence, or the people responsible had changed their minds about her. Either way, all things considered, whoever was targeting the Voodoo Agency didn't seem to have a taste for publicity. Everything thus far had been done in the dark and kept in the dark. To get involved with UA would perhaps make Rin even safer, with the way the media watched the school's nowadays.

Meeting Principal Nezu's gaze, which was saturated with an unusual and enigmatic depth, Aizawa drew a breath. "Working beneath Doctor Voodoo means she has experience with children. Vulnerable children. Obviously. She also looked after Eri last week." Aizawa gave this a moment to sink in – Principal Nezu knew Eri and so knew she was by no means an easy child for strangers to care for. "Hiruma was fantastic with her. The best I've seen, actually, apart from Mirio-san."

Once again, Nezu didn't reply immediately. Instead, he stared, perhaps waiting for more, eyes darting across Aizawa's face in search of something that may or may not have been there.

He brought his paws closer to his face, considering Aizawa with careful, almost precarious thought. "I'm very pleased with your suggestion, Eraser Head. Very pleased indeed." Though he spoke with the same placidity, there was a new simmer to his words. "You were _always _fond of Hiruma-chan."

"What?"

He remembered Rin as his student, and he remembered her being just the same as everyone else. _Fond _didn't seem like the right word.

Nonetheless, Nezu nodded. "Oh yes. You gave such careful attention to her training – I don't believe I've ever seen you look so pleased as when she won the Sports Festival in her third year. And then there was the matter of all her hospital visits. You even stayed overnight once."

"I–" Aizawa didn't remember any of that.

"Of course, I was very interested in Hiruma Rin's potential too!" Nezu declared, smile widening once again. "Though her quirk was perhaps more detrimental than anything else, her mind was another story. Did you know she took a university level course in child psychology during her second year? Her grades here at UA were acceptable, but her application and perception were absolutely marvelous. She even played a game of chess with me once. Didn't win, not even close, but the attempt was admirable nonetheless." Nezu chuckled.

A sour acidity stewed somewhere within Aizawa. To think of it (and only now did he think of it) he could only vaguely recall Rin winning the Sports Festival – to the point that he may as well have forgotten it. A blurred smashing of noise and colour, with only the slightest smudge of white at the top of the podium to accept first place. That surely wasn't something he'd forget? And yes, he'd always been the one to take her to the hospital, but he'd never been _that _attentive. For Nezu to say he'd been fond of Rin… was… wrong?

"You're quite right to suggest Hiruma-chan for the position, Eraser Head," Nezu said. "Thank you. I will contact her to see if she'd be interested in an interview."

Aizawa only nodded. Stood to leave, feeling mechanical and lost as he made for the door. Rin. Why didn't he remember Rin?

"Oh, Eraser Head. One last question."

Aizawa looked over his shoulder at Nezu, whose smile suddenly nauseated him. Not with disgust. Disgust was far too full-bodied and rational for what Aizawa felt. It was more slithering. A constriction around his skull which set a hazy curtain across his vision.

Nezu cocked his head, pricked his ears once again. "Do you believe in fate?"

The hell? What kind of question was that?

"No," Aizawa said, the word hard and sharp out his throat. "There's no logic to the idea of fate."

"As an intellectual type myself, I don't believe in fate either." Nezu spun on his chair, disappearing behind the tall back of black leather. But when he spoke again, it was with piercing clarity. "Sometimes though, some things just seem much too right to be put down to coincidence."

* * *

Aizawa didn't tell Rin he'd recommended her for the job. During their calls throughout the rest of the week, she didn't say anything about it either – maintaining her usual bubbliness over matters that didn't matter so much. She watched a good show on TV the other night, had tried out a new recipe which she was sure Aizawa would like, had managed to tear a hole in one of her jerseys (which she spoke about with particularly moving emotion). For her not to say anything about the teaching job, she'd either turned down the interview or Nezu hadn't contacted her at all.

And Aizawa was disappointed, to say the least.

He also had a mysterious headache, which worsened gradually as the days went by. It sliced across his eyes, throbbed with cloudy insistence around the back of his brain and into his neck. Not particularly painful, but enduring to the point of being irritating. Much worse at night, too – and it had started on Monday, after Aizawa had racked his brains over his troubling lack of memory; after he had scoured the school for a yearbook from Rin's third year and had found a photo of her from the Sports Festival.

Lanky teenage body, with her hair in a sweaty ponytail. That ugly PE tracksuit which hung over her limbs in unflattering folds. Those stellar eyes, unsettling in their gemstone glow and mythical shadowing. A younger Rin grinned shyly at the camera, more a grimace than any sort of smile, holding her gold medal in an awkward show of the fact that she was the girl in first place. Her face, agonizingly familiar and yet so foreign, a specter of a past life.

A past life Aizawa had been a part of but couldn't call to mind, no matter how he squinted into the tunnels of his memory.

* * *

Friday morning brought with it a miserable drizzle of rain. Too thin to be valuable, but persistent enough to cast a lackluster mood about the class.

Handing out the assignments Rin had helped mark, Aizawa noticed with a certain amount of dull resignation that there were no smiley faces this time, but there were long and encouraging comments. Such a blatantly pretty handwriting, such a sweet and bubbly vocabulary, it was sure to cause a stir – _Wonderful job, Shinsou! I can see you worked very hard on this assignment_, one said. _You made a great effort, Aoyama ~ try using less French next time for your writing to make more sense_, was another. _Exceptional work, Bakugo! :) _So Rin had slipped up. There was a smiley.

Repressing a dismayed groan, Aizawa returned to the front of the class, eying out the grossly contorted features of his students as they considered each other's feedback. Bakugo, in particular, glared at the doodle on his paper, seeming on the verge of a confused and impassioned break, clearly provoked by the look of a smile against his name.

After a moment, Aizawa cleared his throat, attracting an incoherent mix of horrified and delighted stares.

"There was improvement from most of you since your last assignments, which bodes well for your finals at the end of the semester," he said, swallowing against the urge to curl up in his sleeping bag and simply die. "However, none of you should take this as a sign to slack off. Your next assignments will cover a range more topics and will be–"

A knock on the door.

Ever surprisingly small, adjusting his tie with smiling indifference towards the interruption, Principal Nezu peered into the class. "Good morning, students! Eraser Head!"

Class 2A stood with a screeching, gangly bustle of chairs and limbs. They stared wide-eyed at the infrequent visitor, greeting him in the sing-song voice of preschoolers, heavily put-out by the change in Aizawa's marking methods and now too by the oxymoronically imposing presence of their principal. Aizawa also watched Nezu as he wandered into the classroom, hands behind his back as he looked over the students with a peculiar curl about his mouth.

"Please excuse the interruption, Eraser Head, but I have some important news to share," Nezu smiled over the thin point of his nose.

"That's fine." Aizawa returned his attention to the collective flush of his students. "You can all take your seats."

More awkward hustle. When it fell silent again, Nezu brought his paws together in a soft show of interest, pointing his attention towards the door once again. "Please come in, Hiruma-san."

_Her_. It was her. Aizawa stood transfixed, dumbfounded, as she chasséd into the classroom upon an exquisite rush of flowing material – clothes Aizawa had never seen: a maroon skirt breezing around her legs, a perfectly puffed white shirt. And a slightly bruise-like darkness around her eyes that could only have been eyeshadow and the inky blackness women brushed over their lashes. Rin shot him a pink-lipped smile, sending a shiver throughout his limbs, and then she fluttered to face the class, who were apparently equally transfixed.

Mineta made a weird yelp. Aizawa glared him back into silence.

"Everyone, this is Lady Chi. She was a student at UA not so long ago," Nezu introduced her with level-headed pride. "As some of you may know, Hound Dog is going to be stepping down from his position as guidance counsellor to take over the role as head of security. Lady Chi will be coming in as his replacement. All of your parents have been informed through the school's weekly newsletter, as well as by email."

Deftly, so that her hair hung in loose waves over her shoulder, Rin gave a slight bow. "It's so nice to meet you all," she said, and gave an enchanting smile. "I was also Aizawa-sensei's student, so I'm so excited to get to know all of you~"

"_She's like an angel_," someone said.

And within himself, Aizawa agreed.

"We'll be going to all the classrooms to introduce Lady Chi to everybody," Nezu said, and opened his paws in a welcoming gesture. "Before we leave though, you're all welcome to ask any questions you might have."

"Make sure their sensible questions," Aizawa droned. Glancing over her shoulder, Rin grinned at him.

A number of hands went up – some which didn't make Aizawa cringe, others which did – and Nezu pointed out the first of them. Midoriya, who stood with his notebook in hand, looking both unsure of himself and excited enough to be shaking. "I haven't seen anything about you on the TV, Chi-sensei. Does that mean you're also an underground hero?"

Rin continued to smile. "That's right."

Midoriya opened his notebook, held his pencil to the page. "Can you tell us a little bit about your quirk, Chi-sensei?"

Tilting her head, Rin held her hands gently behind her back. Imperceptible to everyone but Aizawa, whose desk afforded him a more whole view of her position, her fingers began to fidget like climbing spiders up and around her wrist. "I can manipulate my blood," she said. "It's an emitter-type that allows me to control the flow of blood within and outside of my body."

Quiet oohs. Some raised eyebrows.

Rin had never said much in the way of her quirk – in high school, when asked to explain it, she'd come across as having very little understanding and very little confidence. Stuttering over words. Fumbling with her fingers and clothes and pencils. Her answer now was much calmer, much more practiced and appealing to the teenage listener. However, it left Aizawa uneasy, the coolness with which she spoke. The impersonal, detached factuality of it, as though she were speaking about someone else's quirk entirely.

Midoriya scribbled it down, brow furrowed. "So it's similar to Vlad-sensei's, then?"

"I suppose," Rin lifted her shoulders in an endearing shrug. "Though I'd say it's perhaps a little more refined."

"What sort of attack does your quirk allow? If you have to draw your blood from your body, does your quirk also allow you to lose more blood than the average human being, or does your blood regenerate much faster? And if not, what sort of contingency plans do you have in place to prevent anemia or bleeding out in the middle of a battle? Perhaps you store blood throughout your hero costume, or perhaps you're like Aizawa-sensei who relies on means besides his quirk to–"

By this muttered onslaught, Rin was perfectly unfazed, even seeming to keep up with Midoriya's questions as they were vomited out in breathless succession. Another stark difference with her younger self – Rin as a teenager had avoided questions as though they were an deathly infection.

Nezu chuckled. "One question at a time, Midoriya. Let's also give your classmates a turn, shall we?"

"Oh – right – sorry…" Midoriya gave a curt bounce of a bow, taking his seat once again.

More hands went up. Aizawa huffed when Ashido stood and used the opportunity to tell Rin that she was a much friendlier looking guidance counsellor than Hound Dog. Yaoyorozu asked what other sort of involvement Rin might have with them as students – if she would take on a role in the dormitories, or if she might take up classes of her own. Kaminari said he liked how white her hair was – "It's like an old lady's, but at the same time not."

Then, making Aizawa's stomach rise and fall into places it shouldn't have been, Nezu gestured to Mineta. The boy stood on his chair, chest puffed idiotically before him, and grinned at Rin as though she were meat in a butchery. "Aizawa-sensei never told us he once taught a goddess," Mineta said, and Rin's eyes widened. "How did Aizawa-sensei get so lucky?"

At this, Aizawa hissed, "If you know what's good for you, you will sit back down this instant and not open your mouth again, Mineta."

Mineta knew what was good for him. But to his statement, Rin held her hands in front of her chest, beaming. "You're so sweet, Mineta-kun! Thank you for the compliment!"

* * *

Aizawa escorted Rin and Nezu back out the classroom, apologizing for Mineta's absurdity. As per her usual fashion though, Rin didn't seem to have any idea what he was talking about – she loved his class; they were so lively; no wonder Aizawa liked them all so much. Nezu thanked Aizawa for giving them the opportunity to introduce Rin. Her interview had gone swimmingly, he said, and she was the perfect fit for the job. They'd be going on now to Present Mic's class – and with that, Nezu began up the corridor, tail swinging smoothly behind him in a satisfied slowness.

Rin lingered behind, gazing at Aizawa. "I was surprised when Principal Nezu said you were the one who suggested me," she said softly.

"Like he said. You're perfect. For the job. Perfect for the job." The headache squeezed itself at the base of Aizawa's skull, and he could have screamed at his own lack of eloquence. Behind him, swelling whispers were being passed around the class. Incoherent, excitable somethings intermingled with giggles and gasps.

"Thank you, sensei," Rin smiled, and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'm so excited to be working with you."

"When are you starting?"

"On Monday, though I think it'll mostly be admin stuff for now. Hound Dog will still take any students' appointments for the next few weeks – but he did say that he might hand over any newcomers to me immediately."

"Good. That's good," Aizawa said. There were more mutters. Someone yelled Mineta's name with bloodcurdling disgust. Torn between the loveliness of Rin's face as she glanced between him and Principal Nezu's ever distancing back, and the ruckus that was gradually rising amongst his students, Aizawa spoke again in an excitable rush, "Can I buy you a drink this evening?"

"A drink?"

"Yes. As a congratulations."

Rin's limbs went stiff and her features, a blossomy pink, shimmered with an anxious pleasure. "I'd love that." She spun on her toes, began to wander after Nezu as she spoke over her shoulder. "Send me a message to say where I should meet you."

Then, around the corner in a ghostly cloud of material and white hair and stunning alterity, she was gone.

* * *

**A/N: Goodness gracious, but _that _was a long one! XD But drinks with a pretty woman? WHAT WILL AIZAWA DO NEXT? For those of you who have been waiting at the edge of your seats for the much anticipated fluff... I would highly suggest you read the next chapter. Because it's going to be a goodie. ;) Until then, you know what to do (follow, fav and leave me a little something nice to read). ^-^**


	20. Saying Too Much & Nothing

Chapter 20  
Saying Too Much & Nothing

Before Rin arrived, Aizawa guzzled down a beer on his own.

The headache hadn't gone away – after her visit to the class, after his students had pestered him with questions about the new and mysterious and very pretty guidance counsellor (at which point, a red-faced Kaminari clarified that he'd meant to say her hair looked like candy floss and not an old lady's), the headache had actually gotten worse. Instead of a quiet and constricting throb, it was now an iron-clad fist digging into the base of his skull. Sapping in its insistence, making everything seem much too loud and much too close.

And Aizawa couldn't stop thinking about Rin; about why it was that in all his memories, when he really put the effort into remembering, she was but an evasive blur of white and sparkling bell-tones. The mundane things were crystal clear. Things like report cards and her face amongst her peers. However, when Aizawa dug deep for something more solid – training Rin's quirk, for example, or even seeing her win the UA Games, because he _would _have been there and he _would _have remembered it – she eluded him. As always. She eluded him as though she'd never been there at all.

Pressing his palms to his eyes, at which a bright burn bounced between his temples, Aizawa sighed. The empty beer glass was taken away. His scarf was warm and stifling despite the chill. As he tugged at it, pulling the folds from his face in a futile attempt at comfort, grunting slightly, a hand glided across his shoulder.

Rin.

She smiled, idling into the seat next to Aizawa. "Have you been waiting long, sensei?" Hair windswept around her face, it did indeed have the blown look of candy floss. Hair so soft and luminous, in fact, the pub's low light glinted against it as though against platinum. Pink cheeks, a sort of breathlessness. "I'm really sorry if you have been. Yamada-sensei came to say hi just before I was going to leave the school, and then he wouldn't stop talking~"

"Not at all," Aizawa said. He'd only been waiting long enough to have downed a beer, and only because he'd been in such a rush to arrive that he'd arrived early. "Do you want something to eat?"

Dull and dream-lit, the pub was empty for the creeping-dark of the hour, as if by pre-arrangement of the gods. Space to spare around the bar, and yet Rin's knee came to be sidled against his. Was she aware of it? Quite as aware as Aizawa was? Her hands fluttered as they spoke in easy, hushed tones – about the school, about the students and other teachers: "Vlad-sensei still scares me, but his class was cute. I liked your class more though, but maybe I'm just biased. Which one was Bakugo? He was so passionate in that one assignment!"

She asked a lot of eager, affectionate questions and Aizawa answered in a struggle not to be too absorbed by the miniscule twitches across her features. Before he could stop himself he'd ordered a third beer as well as a bottle of sake for them to share, to which Rin didn't bat an eye but continued to babble on about all sorts of things.

The bar filled up, and the two of them squeezed in closer to their corner seats. Another bottle of sake. Another plate of edamame beans.

Rin nodded, and hummed, and was both generous and receptive as Aizawa spoke about nothing of importance – which was something he'd never realised he'd needed, this attentive listening, as though he could say things to her that he couldn't say to anyone else. Yamada maybe, but his friend had a boisterous way of deflating serious subjects by making jokes or switching to another conversation or, at more self-centered times, pretending not to hear entirely. Rin though… her attention was dazzling, and Aizawa wanted to never leave. Time was going by in a blur, slowing down and speeding up all at once, and Aizawa only hoped it would freeze.

"What made you decide to go underground?" he asked her, and poured out the final drops from the sake bottle. "Obviously I know you've never liked crowds and the sort of attention that normal pros would get, but at the same time, you've always been… I don't know…"

Rin ran a finger around the rim of her beer glass, leaning her head against her shoulder. She gave a slanted smile, raised an eyebrow. "Too weak for the kind of work underground heroes do?"

"I was going to say soft. Too pretty."

"I didn't know you were a misogynist."

"That's not what I meant."

She giggled, and it reverberated around Aizawa's skull, a liquid glaze of honey over the headache that slowly beat itself out into oblivion. "I know. I'm only teasing." A sip from her sake cup, nose pink and adorable as she said, "I wanted to be like you."

Aizawa rolled his eyes at her. "You're still teasing. I'm not anything special."

"Actually, you're more special to me than you realise." Things went silent for a moment. Shaking her head, bubbling over with another giggle, she tapped her fingers over her lips. "Sorry. That sounded really strange."

"No." It was no stranger than anything Aizawa already felt. "Don't worry about it."

"Besides that though–" taking her hair up from her neck as she spoke, Rin tied it into a ponytail at the top of her head, producing a hairband previously unseen upon her wrist "–normal pros don't deal with the kind of stuff the underground heroes deal with. Their work is a lot more flashy – dealing with the big-shot villains, you know?" She waved her hand deftly in the air. "Like All for One, or the League of Villains before they fell apart. But underground heroes do the dirtier work. The kind of things the public won't turn a camera towards, seedy dealings and all. I wanted to help kids in those kinds of situations…"

"Kids like Eri."

"Exactly! Actually, I don't know if you know, but when everything happened with Eri last year, the Voodoo Agency was asked to help with the mission. But Doctor Voodoo turned it down, which was really weird because that's exactly the kind of thing we usually deal with~" Another large sip of the sake, then she leaned in towards Aizawa and grinned. "It would have been nice if he hadn't turned it down though. You and I would have gone on a mission together."

"That would have been nice." To think of it, had Doctor Voodoo taken the job with Eri, she would likely have ended up with him rather than with Togata and Aizawa and the whole UA system. "Why kids though?"

Rin's smile contorted itself into a thoughtful frown. "Because there are a lot of shitty adults in this world, and no child deserves the bad things adults do to them." She shrugged. "I don't know. But when I was a little, there was a pro that got me out of a very bad situation," she said this slowly, tenderly, and Aizawa's gaze lingered over the sudden haziness of her features. As though she was dreaming. As though she would cry. The beer and the sake had gotten her worked up. "They probably wouldn't remember me now," she continued, "but I couldn't ever forget the way it felt. To know that someone like that was there for me. But so many kids don't ever get to have that – they're hurt or they're abandoned or they're... taken. And no one ever knows. No one ever comes for them. I wanted to be the one that comes for them."

"You sound sad."

"Well… you know… try as I might, I can't save them all."

The inkling fear of any pro hero. Can't save them all. _Can't save them all_. Aizawa also couldn't save them all. Somehow though, the sound of it upon Rin's voice was rung with a tragedy so much greater than Aizawa could pretend to understand – an intoxicated and intoxicating unguardedness, rich with all sorts of unspoken insinuations. He looked away for a moment, and swallowed against nothing. He searched for his hands, which had disconnected themselves from his body in a numb tingling of pins-and-needles, and was both surprised and overwhelmed to find that his fingers had entangled themselves with Rin's upon the bar counter.

His thumb stroked the boney bend of her pinky, and Aizawa was certain he'd never seen anything more wonderful than his hand against hers. Even if, until then, he hadn't been aware of the electrifying smoothness of her skin, or the delicate curve of her knuckles beneath his palm.

It tore through his chest, set his heart in a shocked tumble out his mouth as he said, "When I was in high school, I had this friend. I don't really feel like explaining the whole thing, but we were doing our work study together in second year." With his free hand, he pushed the hair from his face. He closed his eyes, overcome by the alcohol. By Rin and the impossibility of explaining something so vulnerable. "There was a villain attack, and it – I mean, the villain – no – Shirakumo – he didn't make it out."

Rin watched him, leaning in with a quiet hum echoing from the depths of her chest.

"And for a long time," Aizawa continued shamelessly, "I thought about it every second. I would look back at that day and look for the things I'd missed – the kind of things I should have done differently to save Shirakumo. It wasn't rational, and I knew that logically there was nothing I could have done, but even so… I half-convinced myself that things could have been different if only I'd paid attention," Aizawa said this, and realised the convoluted confusion of his words. "This isn't coming out right, but what I mean is that I know what you're feeling. It's fucking shit. But sometimes there's just nothing that can be done."

"Kind of makes you want to try harder though, doesn't it?" Rin cooed. Wisps of hair fell out from her ponytail, and now fully aware of the contact of their hands, Aizawa felt her fingers curve themselves more tightly, with more beckoning comfort, around his.

He nodded slowly.

"Like with your students, and everything that happened last year with the League."

"I suppose," Aizawa shrugged. He tried not to think about it all that much. "But that's also just part of my job, and I didn't exactly win teacher of the year. Most of my students almost got killed. Multiple times. On my watch."

"You think way too lowly of yourself." Rin shuffled closer. Close enough to whisper in a cursive slur of words, "I meant what I said. About wanting to be like you."

"You're very strange."

"So are you." She looked at him, critical and warm. "Do you still feel guilty? About your friend I mean. Shirakumo."

She said his name as though he weren't a stranger. Some abstract shadow-figure from the depths of Aizawa's mind – and though to a better man it may have been insulting, it sent a pleasurable buzz through Aizawa's throat, because he knew that Shirakumo would have liked her. That he would have said she was perfect. "Sometimes. Like when I've been drinking."

Rin's lips perked into another smile. Or not a smile, really, but a slant against her lips which peaked and fell in all the wrong places. "Do you think it ever gets better?"

"I don't know. Logically, guilt is pretty much the same as mourning. There's no closure. No explicit signs of forgiveness – even for the things you know you don't actually need forgiveness for. Because of that, I don't think the guilt ever goes away. You just learn to live with."

Another thoughtful hum. Rin glanced away to nothing, fidgeting with the empty glasses before her.

"Why do you ask?"

"I wanted to know what you think. Because I've always felt guilty. My mom died when I was nine."

Dumbly, Aizawa didn't know what to say, so he mumbled a low and garbled, "I'm sorry."

But Rin shrugged, and crinkled her nose. "Don't be. She brought it on herself – she was a junkie wash-out. Always used this drug that enhanced the effects of a person's quirk." Aizawa shivered. He knew the drug. "Actually, no. It was a cheap knock-off of that drug, because my dad never sent any money, and so she couldn't afford the real deal. But anyway. Her quirk usually worked through a rush of blood to the head – made a person all euphoric and everything. So obviously she went mad over this drug, and would have these spaced-out parties with her spaced-out, creepy friends after locking me in my room…"

Contemptible.

"But then one day, when it was just her and I in the house, she overdosed." Rin paused for a long time, and glared at the lack of alcohol before them. "I tried to wake her up. I mean, whenever she got high like that, I would always use my own quirk to detox her blood–"

At this, Aizawa raised an eyebrow. "But your quirk only works on your blood."

With a weird crumple about her features, Rin waved her hand in dismissal. "It's always been a bit more complicated than that, Aizawa-sensei~" And that was that. She cleared her throat, clasped her forearm with her free hand. "So my mom overdosed, and was passed out in the bath. I tried to wake her up, but nothing I did worked and eventually I got so scared, I ran away."

"You ran away?"

"Yup." A popping sound on the 'p'.

"What happened after that?"

Rin cocked her head, and resumed the genuine glow of a smile she'd had before. "Remember that pro-hero I spoke about earlier?"

Of course Aizawa remembered. He nodded, and Rin nodded back.

"He happened. And things got a lot better after that, when I went to stay with my grandparents and then started at UA – and then there you were." She smiled. Beguiled, Aizawa smiled back. "But I always felt like I'd killed my mom, you know? Or rather, that because I couldn't save her, it was just as bad, and I carried that around never wanting to use my quirk because it wasn't good enough. It always got me in trouble, because my mom never wanted me using it on her, and then she died because I didn't know how to use it properly."

"I had no idea," Aizawa said.

"No one did. Only Principal Nezu knew." Perking up, Rin spoke with a new and breathless excitability. "No one was ever supposed to find out about this, but Principal Nezu actually helped train my quirk from the moment I got to UA ~ he said it was because I was smart, and we needed more smart heroes. He also went on about some theory of his, though I had absolutely _no idea _what he was talking about." Another giggle, and the tension in Aizawa's shoulders that he hadn't known was there began to loosen. "But that was actually how I managed to win the Sports Festival in third year. Because Principal Nezu taught me how to be clever with my quirk."

There it was. The Sports Festival again – and though before Aizawa had listened with keen interest, thoroughly absorbed by this new information which he should've suspected but never did, now he snatched his hand from Rin's to press it against his eyes. The headache reared itself once more. This time, searing. Sending bright jolts of agitated pain down his neck. So desperately vivid, Aizawa didn't notice Rin's hands press themselves against his cheeks, nor her voice as she babbled anxiously, _Are you okay? What is it? Did you eat something bad? Your eyes? Is it your eyes?_

Cool, smooth skin. She pressed her fingers to his temples, gazing with flushed expectancy at Aizawa, and the pain began to dissipate.

At the touch, at the retreating surge of slicing misery, Aizawa sighed.

"Are you okay?" Rin asked again.

"It's fine. I'm fine." Aizawa returned her stare, and cocooned her fingers beneath his palms. "Maybe too much to drink." They stayed like that for a moment, her hands slowly slipping from his temples to his cheeks, his own hands following along over hers. The space between them was thin. Ever closing. Not so much in the physical sense – though their bodies, through silent slippages throughout the evening, were very close too – but in a rather more inexplicable way. "I think we should go home now."

"Yes," Rin agreed, and traced her thumbs over his skin. "Let's go~"

Aizawa paid for six beers and three bottles of sake – three? hadn't they only had two? – and then the two of them ventured out onto the street, not bothering to call a cab because the apartment was only a fifteen minute walk away.

* * *

There were still two beers in the fridge, and also a half-full bottle of red wine. Giddy, unable to bear the idea of going to sleep right then – shock-horror – Aizawa filled a glass for Rin to drink from, unintentionally or intentionally making it rather too full, spilling wine across the kitchen counter in a small splatter like blood. He took a beer for himself, threw his body against the couch in wait while Rin went about putting on more comfortable clothes – "I actually hate clothes," she'd said, blissfully oblivious to the implications, "they're so constricting," and then had disappeared into the bedroom to change.

Not long after, just soon enough for the alcohol not to lull Aizawa into unwilling sleep, she emerged in pajama shorts and one of the usual sweaters. Fluttered over and breezed into the open space on the couch. She took the wine from the coffee table without due hesitation and, flinging her legs over Aizawa's lap, held the glass out towards him. The walk through the night's cold air had done nothing to sober either of them, and it had taken a little longer than fifteen minutes to get back to the apartment.

"_Cheers_~" Rin cooed, eyes shimmering and wide and thoroughly out-of-it. "To drinking until midnight."

Aizawa touched his beer bottle to the glass. "And to your new job."

"Oh, yes. That too." She took a large gulp of wine, and Aizawa touched his fingers to her shin. Cool. Stirring in its sleekness – a bruise here and there, like pencil smudges against her skin. He watched her over the rim of the beer for a reaction, tracing his fingers further: up along her calf muscle and next to her knee, back down again to her ankle. Odd and exhilarating. Rin glanced at the movement of it, betraying nothing other than the same dewy smile across her lips.

The headache had disappeared again, and Aizawa had already forgotten – or chosen to ignore – the trauma of it. He insisted he was fine when Rin asked him over and over if he was okay, and promptly changed the subject to other things. Inanities once more, but no less poignant than the things they'd said at the bar. Little bits of arbitrary and wonderful information – their first cats, and growing up in Tokyo (Rin had grown up there too, before moving to Miyazaki with her grandparents), and their second cats, and all sorts. Not laughing at anything, but there were times when Aizawa would smile. And then it would disappear. And then he would smile again – and _oh_, it was fucking incredible.

The beer bottle was on the floor now, and Rin was only halfway through her wine. Nonetheless, she'd stopped drinking from it a while ago.

"It's getting late," she said slowly, voice low and honeyed. She switched her wine glass from one hand to the other and, with the confident softness of a falling star, lowered her own fingers to Aizawa's where they rested upon her thigh. Rin ghosted over his knuckles. Curled her index finger against his in a tender, delicate beckoning. "Tonight was nice."

"Yes."

"We should probably try sleep."

Aizawa, numbly dizzy, shook his head. "No."

A sugar-spun smirk – full-bodied and tempting – glistened over Rin's lips. She bent over sideways, abandoning her glass upon the coffee table, and then returned in a conspiratorial lean towards Aizawa. Acrid scent of wine on her breath. Deep glimmer in her eyes. "Do my ears deceive me~?" she purred. "Is Aizawa-sensei turning down the opportunity to go to bed?"

Her hair fell over her shoulder in a platinum glow of silk. Her hand continued to sear itself against Aizawa's, perfect and fine and wonderfully pale.

He stared at her as one would at a painting. Enchanted. Surprised and slightly confused by the subtle nuances of her that now seemed a vivid impossibility – because it didn't seem right, it didn't seem fair, that suddenly, in the lonely space of the apartment and in the spinning darkness of the hour, she should be so incredibly beautiful. Aizawa took her wrist in his palm, gently tugging. "Come here."

Rin's mouth blossomed into a grin. Cheeks flushed, nose pinker still, she shuffled closer. Up next to him. Almost into his lap.

"You're so drunk right now," she said and giggled, looping her arms around Aizawa's neck.

Drunk, indeed. But that didn't seem very important. Leisurely, Aizawa pushed up the sleeve of Rin's jersey, watching as the material scrunched into folds at her elbow. He turned his head. Pressed his mouth to the vulnerable flesh of her wrist. Inhaling deeply and feeling the bulging undulation of her scars as he did so. Veins. Blood. Her quiet pulse beneath his lips. And when he pulled away, only ever so slightly, he mumbled into her skin, "So are you."

She moved against him. He lifted his head, lethargic under the weight of the alcohol.

And in a slurred, strange movement, they kissed: a messy press of lips, hers cold and wet, distantly echoing the taste of merlot. Aizawa shivered as her hands pressed themselves against his cheeks once again, entrapping his face next to hers. He was uncertain enough to think that at any moment, Rin would spring away. Horrified. Slapping him hard instead of stroking his skin with her thumbs, gently and unabashedly. Daringly, they touched the tips of their tongues: he running his along the thin border of her mouth, she yielding to it with a hushed, falling sigh. The sound of it, the warm rush of her breath, pierced through Aizawa, and the absurdity of kissing her seemed to dissipate into the surrounding darkness.

He snaked his hands around her waist, pulling her against him until he could mistake her heartbeat for his own. Erratic. Thrilling. Charmed by the growing sense of abstraction as he felt over her frame. The sharp curve of her shoulder blades. Her bowed spine. There was a meeting point where her jersey became her shorts, and Aizawa ran his hands over the backs of her hamstrings with new fascination at the smoothness of tensed muscle. Relishing her rush as she clutched at his scarf, tugging it away and burying her palms into his shirt. Cold hands against his chest, his stomach.

He rolled his head away from hers, and settled his face into her neck. Kissing behind her ear, suckling the tendons, biting into the balcony of her collarbone so that she went rigid against him and offered a sweet, greedy gasp. She clasped the waistband of his pants. Lingering there – whether hesitant or teasing, Aizawa couldn't decide – before returning her grasp to his shirt and pulling it off over his head with jolting force. A flash of icy air crossed his torso, and then came the brush of cozy material as Rin leaned forward against him once more, feeding her lips onto his impatiently. One hand along his jaw, the other resting in a delayed uncertainty against his hip.

Aizawa couldn't help but feel that, somewhere in his mind, this was _exactly_ how he'd planned for the evening to go. That he'd known all along he wanted her _so fucking badly _and that she must have wanted him too – and Lord, it felt so right. Like something long-lost was falling into place or sparking back to life at the taste of her lips, the coolness of her skin on his. Even if it were happening fast, there was nothing irrational about it. Nothing meaningless or inane, because she felt like fate if ever there was such a thing. Like he had craved her like this in a thousand different lifetimes.

Softly biting into her lip in eager imploration, Aizawa ran his hands down her jersey, to sharply jutting hipbones and then up again. Pushing away the material, beginning to remove one more material barrier when Rin pulled away, suddenly serious and clutching his wrist. It hovered, concealed, over her waist, numbly trembling.

Aizawa narrowed his eyes. "Did I do something?"

"No," Rin said quietly. "It's just… Before you do that, I'm not – I mean, my skin. It's not pretty."

"What?"

"I can keep my jersey on."

Sliding his wrist out from her grasp, Aizawa rolled his eyes. "Don't be ridiculous." And without resistance, he removed both her jersey and shirt, fixating first on the mounds of her stunning, milky-white breasts beneath black lace – like something from a gothic masterpiece. He lowered his eyes to take in the curves of her stomach, the outlines of her waist, and then he saw them.

Furious spots. Dark spheres of mottled flesh speckled like an infection up her side, from below her ribs and into her bra. Cigarette burns – old and scarred, but no less painful to look at in their swarming pestilence – intermingled with the sort of cutting scars that stretched along Rin's arms. His palms resting against her hips, Aizawa considered these marks through a liquid daze.

Against him, Rin swayed slightly. She ran her fingers along his chest and ribcage, down to his thighs where she began to move them in slow, suggestive streaks. Up and down, up and down again. Subtle rushes of blood into all the right places.

"I know it's ugly," she murmured, eyes set on Aizawa. "I'll put a shirt on or something, if you want."

"No," Aizawa said, and wrapped one hand around her nape. "You're exquisite." Without a second thought toward the scars – because when the promise of Rin, in all her once-unattainable and once-unknown magnifence was dangled before him, what did scars matter? – he pulled her face against his in another, incoherent kiss, wrapping his arms around her back and thighs to slide off from the couch. To hold her tightly against him and relish the glide of their tongues against each other as he carried her to the bedroom, where there were condoms in the bedside table and the bed was much more inviting with two people on it.

* * *

**A/N: Uwu! :3 **


	21. Strings

**A/N: THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone who let reviews on the previous chapter ~ you are all so sweet, and I am so happy to see that people are liking this story as much as I'm liking writing it! ^-^ After the nicey-niceness of the previous chapter, I thought you could all use a little angst. :P Will try to have the next chapter up by tomorrow... Enjoy!**

Chapter 21  
Strings

_The most exhilarating pain comes from the collision between what I know and what I feel – because what I know is that I need to keep cutting away at strings, to keep loosening the invisible ties of blood and memory that are entangled between us. I know that your sleeping body next to mine is the most dangerous thing in this world. That I should deny the pulse you set through my veins before everything is in knots. No… before everything becomes more knotted than it already is, than we already are. _

_What I know is that I am terrified of how tightly you clutch me to your chest, and of how your heartbeat tugs at mine. _

_You are so close. _

_You are so quiet._

_And I can smell the alcohol still on your breath, and the sweat against your skin as it mingles with mine. Drying, heated bodies. Your arm around me. Your face pressed into my hair. And it's as though I can still hear you murmuring into every inch of me – my name in ways you've never said it before, moans and echoes, ever so soft: the reverberation of your voice against my lips and neck, my stomach and thighs. Things I would never have expected. Words you may or may not mean, tying me against you. _

_Words and touches. A new, startling closeness. You are too close, and I already know that everything is unravelling. I saw it in your eyes: that glazing look of recollection when I couldn't stop myself from plucking at the heartstrings of far-off memories. That night long ago. Those school days long gone. Things you can't remember. Things I hope you won't __**ever**__ remember – and now, with my hands against your skin, sleepless in the darkness of your bedroom while you breathe over the flesh of my neck, I am afraid that all those strings and ties and knots I have worked to cut away are falling back into place._

_Those blood-red cords that continue to bring me back to you. Even if I don't believe in fate, even if I continue to run and run from such unspoken bonds. _

_I don't believe we are tied beyond escape, but I also want to hope it's true. That fate is real and we belong like this. _

_Because though I am terrified, the taste of you lingers against my tongue, and my skin feels whole over the places you traced your lips. Over the scars which mar me. Over my cheeks and fingers and hips, which have never been touched so gently. For a moment, I also forgot the past – you and I were strangers, beyond the present and outside time in a slow, slurred mess of sex – and I was more whole than I have ever been. Unconcerned with the unseen eyes of a girl who once called you Aizawa-sensei, who wished and prayed and wanted desperately to be just like you. _

_More than that though, I forgot that I was once the child who had nowhere to go. Who was stained in crimson and tears, unable to utter even her own name –that child, who on that night long ago was taken up in the arms of a hero named Eraser Head. A hero. There for me when I only wished I would die. To keep me safe. Remember? You saw me, and held me, and said that everything would be alright. And though I know that if you did remember now it would destroy everything, I also feel warm in your arms. Just like all those years ago, and even more so now. Real and protected. Far from being lost amongst the shattered remains of a past from which I try to flee. _

_You moan. Mutter something under your breath, eyes still closed, and pull me closer to you. I feel your fingers trace circles against my back in a tender mix of sleepy leisure and satisfied numbness. I sigh too. Bury my face into the skin of your neck, relishing the graze of stubble and the musky, slightly dirty scent of you. _

"_Rin."_

"_Yes?"_

"_Don't ever leave."_

_You're still drunk. Probably confused. I'm confused too, and say nothing, but press my lips to the sharp ridge of your jaw. More prickling unshavedness, like pins and needles. Wonderful in ways I would never have thought. Then, as I wrap myself ever more tightly against your body, knowing full-well that there isn't a single other person in the entirety of the world – no matter what strings bind or loosen – that my heart could possibly beat for, I say, "Please don't ever remember me." _


	22. Morning-After Glow

**A/N: And here we are, another chapter! Just have to say that all of your guys' theories after the previous one were mega-fun to read. Looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts. ;) Enjoy!**

Chapter 22  
Morning-After Glow

For a long time, Aizawa didn't move – rooted to the bed, willing away the nausea in his gut and the heavy tremble about his limbs. He was not in pain, not yet, but could feel an inert pressure in between his temples like the weight of a curled and waking animal. It was important not to provoke it, this hangover. Unlike the headache of the past few days – which had attacked the innards of Aizawa's skull with a special vengeance – this headache was indifferent to his misery. Once roused, it would slink behind his lids in quite the same way as a caged predator: moving out of boredom rather than by any sense of malicious intent. Dull, debilitating.

Aizawa lay supine on the bed. A blurred strip of pale daylight reflected on the ceiling was all that broke the darkness. Out of the corner of his eye, he ogled the contents of the bedside table. Rin's books, both their cellphones. Her houseplant, somehow imposing in its purple fleshiness, and an empty glass.

Aizawa's mouth was dry but he didn't dare move, held at knife-point by the threat of pain and also pinned by the sleepy weight of Rin's head against his chest.

She was naked. He was too – and as much as he wished he'd been drunk enough to not remember anything, that his impending hangover would slice away at the memory of the previous night, Rin's body next to him was much too real, much too enjoyable in its warmth and softness, for everything to have simply been a dream. There was the scratch of her wound's bandage against Aizawa's side, the mass of white hair spread in a tangled cascade. And as Aizawa slowly, apprehensively, ran his fingers over her ribcage, there was the mottled unevenness of scarring upon her skin.

On one level, under the dizzying immensity of his post-alcohol affliction and a certain morning-after euphoria, it would have been the most perfect thing in the world to have pulled Rin closer into him and to have drifted back into helpless sleep.

However, on another level, Aizawa felt almost suffocated by the weight of all that was new and unknown. Pressing down against him, causing the creature in his head to stir. A mingled smell of Rin and sex and washed sheets lingered in the air, and an expanding horror settled against Aizawa's chest as he realised through successive flashes of memory that there was still a mess of wine to be cleaned in the kitchen, and that he'd slept with Rin, and that (despite all his rational intention, in a lethargic state of sensual bliss) he had completely forgotten about the condoms in the bedside drawer.

He flattened his hand against his forehead, feeling the headache recede to no particular coordinate as he did so, and groaned.

It sent goosebumps and a precarious sickness through Aizawa when Rin's voice, a whispered breath of uncertainty, ghosted against his skin. "Are you awake?"

"Mmm."

Rin held her breath, limbs going stiff in their entanglement with Aizawa's. For a long time, both of them lay there, hands not venturing to move against the other's skin. Piercingly, the subtle thud of Rin's heartbeat was identical to Aizawa's, and he couldn't banish the desire to kiss her again. Long and softly. To drink in the alarming paleness of her naked skin and to consider with more sober lucidity the selection of curiosities across her body.

At the same time, he was too shocked to move. Too stifled by a foreboding unease over the strangeness of it all: a strangeness only amplified by the unwieldy silence. An unbridgeable distance suddenly seemed glaring, and it reminded Aizawa very strongly of when Rin was his sixteen – or at least, the insignificant details he apparently _could_ remember about her. Awkward and gangly. Sexless pictures of lanky limbs and red-marks against her curly handwriting. PE tracksuit. Quirk training. Scoldings, because she was clumsy in her attacks and uncertain in her defense. A young, childish face, staring at Aizawa with expressions indecipherable through the dark tunnel of his memory.

Seared by the image, Aizawa finally drove himself to get out of bed. To pull on the first pair of pants he could find (the ones from the previous evening had mysteriously vanished, and quite unsurprisingly, the alternative which caught Aizawa's eye were the hot-pink sweatpants bundled in the cupboard) and to retreat from the oppressive mystery of the bedroom.

The headache began its slink along his skull, settling first in the corners of his eyes and then moving with the laziness of a tired feline to other indeterminate positions. And as he fumbled hopelessly, grimacing against the sour waves of nausea, Rin only watched. Sitting up against the pillows, sheets wrapped around her frame in an erotic mess of comfort. Lips downturned. Brow delicately furrowed: an impassive attempt at confusion or displeasure.

"Get dressed," Aizawa mumbled, and was disappointed when she seemed to hear him. "We have to talk."

"About what?"

"Just get dressed."

But of course she didn't listen. Swathed only in bedsheets, apparently making no attempt to hold them too tightly to herself, she followed Aizawa out the bedroom and toward the kitchen. Folds of material fell over her shoulders – how unfair, that her collar bones should be so perfectly curved and that her flesh should be so stunningly smooth. Aizawa's tongue had traced itself along the mounds and crevices of those shoulders; Rin's fingers had stroked his hair as he did so. With a shiver – whether pleasant or not, Aizawa couldn't decide – he set his eyes on something else. The fridge. The sponge in the sink. The kettle as it boiled. Just something that wasn't her, in all that cozy untidiness of clouded hair and darkly shadowed eyes and soft, naked skin.

"Do you need painkillers?" Rin questioned. "You look like you're going to be sick."

"No." Aizawa turned away, leaning himself in a resigned slump against the counter. "Just… give me a moment."

Silence. Penetrative and pregnant. The kettle stopped boiling, and the bedsheets rustled as Rin shifted her weight. She stepped deeper into the kitchen. Her toes curled against the chill of the floor, and Aizawa sighed at the sight of it. Such pristine, white feet. Such cute toes.

"Are you angry?"

"What?"

Rin's features crumpled self-consciously, a full-bodied pout to her lips. Around her eyes were dark smudges – heavy, dirty blacks. Like charcoal. Her make-up? Oddly pretty. Delicate and vulnerable. She swallowed against nothing, throat undulating with tight sharpness, and she gazed intently at Aizawa. "Are you angry?" she repeated. "Because of last night?"

He sighed. Pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. "No." It was impossible to ever be angry with Rin. "I enjoyed it. Very much."

Maudlin, Rin narrowed her eyes. "_But_?"

"But we can't do that again."

"Why not?"

"We just can't." Aizawa pushed the hair from his face languorously, shutting his eyes against the painful throb in his temples and the overwhelming intensity of Rin's presence. "Besides which, there's something more important we need to talk about." He didn't continue, but took two cups from the drying rack and reached for the coffee jar. "Let me make coffee first though."

"No," Rin said, a creeping irritation in the quiet bell-tone of her voice. "Tell me now."

"Coffee first."

"_Now_."

Against his better judgement, Aizawa turned to glare at her, which he shouldn't have done for two reasons. In the first place, looking at her sent a dull pleasure down his spine and into the pit of his stomach: she was so beautiful. Too beautiful for her own good, and the allure of her wrapped in nothing but bedsheets, mussed and dewy in the plain morning light of the kitchen, made denying her seem grossly ridiculous. The second reason was that, startled by the vehemence of his glare – which was inspired more by the violent crashing within his skull and gut than by any irritation with her – Rin's eyes went wide and made her seem to be suddenly on the verge of tears.

Huffing, pressing his palms to the tops of the cups with frustrated pressure, Aizawa shook his head. "Fine," he grumbled. "We didn't use a condom."

Beneath the folds of the bedsheets, Rin's shoulders relaxed. "Oh."

"_Oh_?" Aizawa raised an eyebrow at her. "That's all you have to say?"

"You don't need to worry about that," Rin said, and gave a sheepish half-smile. "I already use a contraceptive, and haven't got any sort of nasties to pass on."

Her unfazed sweetness (was she not as hungover as he was?), apart from making Aizawa feel much more outrageous than he already felt, was disturbing. Such irrational thoughtlessness on her part irritated him, and though he should have been relieved that he hadn't just knocked up a former student, he could only stare at her in dismay. "That's all good and well for _me_," he said, more sarcastic than he'd intended. "But what about you? What if I've got the," he air-quoted with his fingers, "_nasties_."

Rin shrugged. "You don't."

"You don't know that. I could spend my free time going to midget orgies. What then?"

At such an absurd suggestion, Rin did not attempt to restrain a surprised expression. Her lips curled endearingly, as though to resist a laugh, and she raised her eyebrows at Aizawa. "Guess I'll get midget-STDs then," she said, clearly amused.

"For fuck's sake, Rin." Jolted by the ease with which he said her name, running his hands down his face, Aizawa struggled to believe the difficulty of talking to her. Or rather, the difficulty of making sense of the situation, in which he wanted to throttle her but at the same wanted to throw her back against the bed, to spend the day with her curled up next to him. "You can't be so reckless."

"Sorry~" she cooed. "_Do _I have a reason to be concerned?"

Aizawa sighed, defeated. "No."

"I thought so." In a shuffle of sheets, she came closer, expression a soft shimmer of sweetness quite unsuited to the ache through Aizawa's body. She tilted her head at him. As though purposefully, the material around her shoulders slipped further down. "Is _that _why you said we can't do this again? Because you're worried about being reckless?"

"Stop this."

"Please tell me," she said in a quiet whine and, with impossible softness, snaked her fingers out of her bedsheet-cocoon to run them down Aizawa's stomach. "Did I do something wrong?"

A million small explosions through Aizawa's bones. Butterflies or warning signs. Rin watched him, her silken air of expectation both soothing and thoroughly vexing. It was by no sick or pious lack of desire that he moved to hold her wrist, no sense of sense that made him stop her gentle tracing – it was only uncertainty, a dreadful restlessness which Aizawa couldn't place and seemed rational but really wasn't. "You did everything perfectly," he said, dazed by their closeness. "But you're just… so young."

"I'm not _that _much younger than you."

"Please," Aizawa huffed. "You're young enough to have been my student."

Rin withdrew her hand, leaving an empty coolness against the skin she'd touched. "So that's it. You think this is like sleeping-with-teacher."

"I didn't say that."

"No," Rin whispered. "But that's what it seems like." She closed the space between them even more, until the comfort of the bedsheets crumpled against Aizawa's chest and her toes could easily have touched his. Her breath falling along his neck, still with the faint scent of alcohol, Aizawa's hands drifted up against her arms in a charmed moment of elation. She tilted her head, smiling with honeyed enchantment. "You know I'm not your student anymore, right? And that there's nothing wrong if you want to do it again."

"Were you always this impossible?" And though Aizawa meant this, he also knew she was right. Not that it made him feel much better, since now it was only obvious to them both that he had a post-sex, hungover flair for the dramatic.

Rin giggled. "I do try."

She rose up onto her toes and, seeming to relish her power, pressed her lips to Aizawa's in a gentle, fleeting touch. The headache continued to claw through him. A vile spell of nausea sent his insides churning. However, neither of these things were particularly important, nor was the tired quiver about his hands as he leveled them against Rin's shoulders. Her bare skin was cool. The flutter of her mouth, soothing. And when she withdrew just enough to murmur into his lips, voice a calm tremor – _Do you want to stop? _– Aizawa could only shake his head dumbly.

"Alright~" Rin spun out from Aizawa's reach with a satisfied, sighing sound, the rustle of the bedsheets haunting in their scratching, echoing softness. Rin began to wander away in an inviting, lazy sway, but paused at the kitchen door to grin over her shoulder with mischievous affection. "You might like to know that cuddles are a very good cure for hangovers," she said, and dropped the sheets ever so slightly more to reveal the sculpted sleekness of her back. "I'm going back to sleep now, if you'd like to join."

Unintentionally – but thoroughly pleased nonetheless – Aizawa gave no thought whatsoever to his previous hesitation, nor to the unmade cups of coffee and the uncleaned wine spill, as he followed Rin back to the bedroom.

* * *

**A/N: TFW your protagonist has way more game than you could ever hope to have. XD**


	23. Distracted

Chapter 23  
Distracted

Everything about the hours between Sunday night and Monday morning had been torture. Having returned to the noisy activity of the 2A dormitory, left with the faintest illusion of Rin's scent against his clothes, Aizawa only managed to grumble through it. Hard as he tried though, he hadn't been able to keep his mind from Rin – thoughts hovering obtrusively over her, so lingeringly wonderful had the weekend been. The bed hadn't been made once since Saturday morning, following an infinite sequence of the two of them being tangled amongst the sheets and then Rin getting up to make coffee, then unhurried, languid kisses and muttered somethings and more coffee.

All of it had been slow. Sleepy and quiet, as though a dream – and certainly, Rin had been right about cuddling being a cure for hangovers. More than that: somewhere between the tulip-stem litheness of her limbs, the affectionate breezing of her lips across his body, and the domesticity of her closeness, Aizawa's uncertainty had been quick to dissipate. Lost alongside the will to ever leave such comforts as Rin's skin against his. The dimness of the bedroom, cold winds blowing through the window. Her low, attentive hums and touches as they spoke about a hundred nothings that meant a thousand somethings.

Aizawa told her more about Shirakumo, the plans they'd had in high school to open an agency together – an agency with a rooftop space, and a sound proof studio for Yamada to shout and scream as he pleased, and a cat tower for their agency's resident cat. How all of that seemed unreal and hazy now, and how Aizawa hadn't imagined working alongside anyone else ever since.

Rin told him about her grandparents. Her grandmother had recently had a knee operation; her granddad's dementia was strange and unexplainable (mostly, he only remembered her grandmother, but on days he remembered Rin he was anxious and protective – muttering things to himself no one could really make sense of but which was apparently a common symptom of the condition – _they're coming back for her _was a favourite of his, which Rin only shrugged off as elderly gibberish but which apparently perturbed her grandmother greatly).

She also told Aizawa about her dad. An alcoholic. When she was six, he developed some form of chronic pain disorder. None of the doctors could explain. Nothing helped, and so he drank himself into oblivion.

Together, they revealed these things, small pieces of hardened soul to be chipped away, and then they would slink back into unbothered silence. Gentle kisses and grazes of flesh. Painkillers for Aizawa's headache. Lazy affections which seared themselves into Aizawa's skin with remarkable pleasure. And on Sunday night, he was left with what could only be described as a gaping hole over the places Rin had touched. She'd kissed him goodbye with a certain desperation. A sullen, dizzying eagerness which Aizawa reciprocated without realising.

Now, Monday morning passed by with relative ease, and the lunch hour loomed with all the promise of an oasis.

To the students, Aizawa probably looked to be lurking through the corridors with the same lethargic indifference as ever. However, he knew he was in a rush. He _knew _he was a distracted mess, and that seeing Rin now would probably only make him more of one. Nonetheless, the lack of self-control was overwhelming, and Aizawa wandered towards Hound Dog's office – Rin's office? – in a harried state of bliss. Ignoring students as they scurried past. Unfazed by the curious stares of those who knew he did not otherwise frequent this part of the school.

The door was open. Aizawa froze some way away from it when he heard Yamada's voice carry out into the hallway.

"–and if you need any help finding your way around, just let me know! It can get like a maze around here, ya dig?"

And then, much softer – enough so that Aizawa wouldn't have heard had he not be straining to hear – came Rin. Awkward and giddy. Suffering beneath Yamada's well-intentioned loudness. "Thank you, Yamada-sensei, but I did go to school here. I think I should be okay."

"No need to call me Yamada-sensei anymore! You can just call me Mic. We're teammates now!"

"Uh. Okay. Thank you, Mic."

"And don't worry about calling the other teachers 'sensei' either, Hiruma-san – or should I call you Chi-san? Chi-chan? Either way? Great! They all might look a little scary, but you'll get used to them in no time. Midnight is super keen to have you on board!"

"That's good to hear."

"And Aizawa probably won't say it out loud, but I bet he's excited to have his favourite former student back at UA!"

"Uh–"

"We should all go out for drinks this weekend! Whaddaya think?"

"Yes. Drinks. Drinks would be nice."

The conversation, in all its trope-like incompatibility, made Aizawa cringe. Like listening to an overexcited macaw jabber at a small mouse, one with absolutely no means of escape and no willpower to make the macaw stop talking. However, by his better judgement, Aizawa did not jump in to Rin's rescue – on the contrary, he turned away and began to skulk back to the teachers' office. Irritated with Yamada's need to be welcoming. Irked by his own rationality, for he knew that his being there for no reason other than to say hello would have caused a ruckus. And so the unsatisfied pining continued, pawing at Aizawa with dismal sluggishness.

* * *

However, such pessimism melted away when Aizawa found the brown paper bag on his desk: holding a container of curry and noodles. Chopsticks. A chocolate pudding. As well as a sticky note, doodled with a large and friendly smiley. Undeniably Rin's handiwork, which made the corners of Aizawa's mouth twitch upwards. Now he could see the appeal in such juvenile doodles, and why his class scoured their marked assignments for them as though they were Easter eggs or gems. Small, precious rewards; indeed, there was something very thrilling about it, that little bracket mouth and those dotted eyes.

The warm smell of bell peppers and chicken wafted out from beneath the container's lid. For a moment Aizawa only sat with his nose at the edge of the tupperware, inhaling deeply. Relishing the image of a bare-footed Rin bustling about the kitchen, half-hoping she'd been wearing nothing but one of his old shirts as she went about slicing and frying her mysterious ingredients.

Unidentifiable spices. Something with an acidic crunch, and as per the usual, more vegetables than Aizawa would ever have known what to do with – all of them softened to perfection, all of them browned and delicious amongst the curry's creaminess.

Aizawa was chewing through a mouthful of noodles when Yamada burst into the office. "Yo, yo!" Excitable, as always. Bustling past the desks and towards Aizawa as though upon a heavy gust of wind. He swiveled into the next open chair, finger-gunning. "What culinary delights have you got for us today, Aizawa?"

"Curry," Aizawa mumbled, mouth still full.

"Nice! Smells good." Yamada spun on the chair and kicked on leg over the other.

"It is."

"Think I could have a bite?"

"No."

With a pouting shake of his head, Yamada whined, "So spiteful – I liked it better when you only ate jelly! Nowadays I sit here, watching you dig into the fruits of your domestic labour without even the satisfaction of enjoying it with you!"

With all intentions to rub salt in the wound, Aizawa lifted a piece of chicken to his mouth. Chewing slowly upon its juiciness. Raising his eyebrows at Yamada in a show of indifference.

The other man huffed dramatically. "Fine. Be like that then. I can just change the subject." To emphasise his point, Yamada snapped his fingers and grinned. "Today is Hiruma Rin's first day – been to say hello yet? I was just there." He touched a gloved finger to his chin in exaggerated thought. "She's a quiet one, isn't she?"

"Or you're just too loud," Aizawa shrugged in an attempt to conceal his creeping envy. "Could have scared her into wordlessness."

"Me? Too loud?" A harsh chuckle. "_Never_! For reals though, are you going to go say hi? You should! You won't _believe _how much she's changed. Remember how awkward she used to be? Well, duh, of course you remember." Yamada looked over his glasses at Aizawa with a knowing perk to his eyebrows. "Anyway, she's pure-angel now. Pretty as a peach – and she cooks! Brought her own lunch and everything, which she was eating when I went over to her office just now. Funny, now that I think of it, she was eating the same thing as you–"

Aizawa paused in his chewing, watching as Yamada's face froze into an indecipherable expression. They stared at each other, neither of them venturing to move a muscle, and Aizawa's spine went rigid at the choked sound which escaped Yamada's throat. The other man jerked, features doing a sick spasm, and he ripped the glasses from his face to reveal a pair of horrified eyes, both of them wide and flaring with realization.

"Oh my– Holy shit. _Holy shit_, Aizawa!"

The other teachers turned questioning looks onto them. Narrowing his eyes, shoving aside the curry with the same anxiety as one would a hot potato, Aizawa hissed, "Stop it. There's no reason for you to freak out."

"You're eating the same curry as Hiruma-chan. The _same home-made curry_." A devilish grin appeared across Yamada's face; just as quickly, it disappeared. He spoke in a booming whisper, soft enough for the other teachers not to hear, but loud enough to pique interest. "So all this time… All the lunches you've been bringing… I knew there was a woman. I knew it, and I thought you'd tell me when it got more serious! But _this_! You're sleeping with that sweet angel down the hallway and didn't once think to mention it!?" Yamada sank into the chair. "Aizawa. I am shooketh. Truly."

Aizawa rolled his eyes, made a disgruntled noise. "I did tell you a while ago there was a damsel in distress."

"Distress? Our new guidance counsellor didn't look very distressed!" Yamada gasped. "I bet she's here because you recommended her for the job."

"Good grief. Just calm down. She's been staying with me for the last while because of an injury–"

"How long?"

"What?"

Yamada pulled a face, shoving his hands against his hips as he leaned towards Aizawa to glare at him more closely. "How long has she been 'staying with you'?"

"Four or five weeks,"

"Five weeks!? You've been sleeping with Hiruma-chan for _five weeks_!?"

"Ssh!" Aizawa hissed. For what must have been the first time in years, his face had grown hot beneath such scrutiny. The presence of the other teachers, all of them suddenly seeming to have zoned in with inconspicuous attention, burned Aizawa at every angle. He'd only slept with Rin three times now – technically, there was no promise it would happen again, and so _technically _they weren't _actually_ sleeping together (this was only a superficial reasoning though, and Aizawa knew it). "I didn't say I was sleeping with her."

A scoff. "You would have denied it when I said it the first time round if you weren't!"

"Seriously. Calm down," Aizawa repeated. "There was nothing to tell."

"Was? Past tense? So there _is_ something to tell now?" Yamada pulled another face, this one much more dramatic in its angled dismay. "For the sake of our friendship, you better not be keeping any more secrets from me. Mark my words, Aizawa, I'll divorce you if you continue hiding this secret ho-life of yours."

And as though the conversation wasn't already at its worst, another voice chimed in over the desk divider. Kayama peered at them, eyes glimmering with hungry suggestion at the tid-bits of conversation she'd apparently just walked in on. "Aizawa's a ho?" she purred. "Tell me more."

Yamada pointed an accusing finger at Aizawa. "He's been whoring out his body to our new guidance counsellor for _five weeks _now!"

Kayama gasped. "No way!"

"Way!"

"So _that's _why you've taken on so little hero work lately!" Kayama turned her stare onto Aizawa, smiling with twisted delight, giggling at what must have been an absurd expression. "You've been too busy selling your body for all these lunches. How sexy!"

"Why do you know I haven't taken on hero work?" Aizawa demanded.

"Well, you see~" Kayama cooed, tapping her finger against the rim of her glasses. "After you asked me to take care of dorm duty, I thought there must have been something major happening that you needed to take care of. But when I contacted my agency – you know, in case you needed help – they said that everything was quiet." She cocked her head, waved her hand condescendingly. "So I assumed it had to do with that baby-sitter you couldn't get hold of. Remember? The one you were so worried about? When you wouldn't tell me whether or not she was attractive, I _knew _you thought she was. So I did some digging, and found that you haven't taken on hero work for almost four weeks now. At least, not anything to keep you away from home for too long…"

With a groan, Aizawa leaned his head into his hand. "Why are you like this?"

"So you _have_ been sleeping with her then?" Kayama smirked – and when Aizawa offered no response other than his best attempt at a glare, she returned her attention to Yamada. "He's definitely sleeping with her."

Yamada shook himself in disbelief. "Caught red-handed, you stud!"

"Don't call me that."

Kayama cackled, hands pressed to her cheeks. "And here I thought I had a thing for younger partners, Aizawa! She is a cutie though – you've got a weird sort of high-school-sweethearts thing going on here. Very kinky. Does she call you sensei in bed?"

"You are the most disgusting woman I've ever met."

"Gotta agree," Yamada said, and Aizawa watched in horror as the other man chewed a mouthful of Rin's curry – the chopsticks having been snuck between his gloved fingers in amongst the ruckus. He raised a smug eyebrow at Aizawa, swallowing with satisfaction before he continued. "That's pretty nasty, Kayama. Although, at the same time, she's kind of right–"

"Shut up. Both of you."

* * *

The lunch hour couldn't have ended soon enough. After having fled from Yamada and Kayama's anxious excitement, Aizawa marched through the corridors in a huff – fumbling over his thoughts, praying silently to whatever celestial being might listen that both Yamada and Kayama, whether as individuals or as a small gang, would leave Rin alone about the matter. Aizawa himself hadn't done a good job of quelling their thirsty eagerness. It was hard to imagine Rin, in all her feather-headed sweetness, having a much easier time in their clutches.

In hindsight, it would have been much simpler to have told Yamada about her back when there really hadn't been anything to tell. Had there ever been such a time though? It was hard to say now, when everything about Rin was tainted by rose-tinted adoration. As though Aizawa had always been mad over everything about her. As though she'd always been a terrible, wonderful source of distraction.

Aizawa considered these things, mulling over the degrees of truth in Yamada and Kayama's statements until arriving back at his classroom.

There, he found an ominous silence. His students, gathered in a slanted semi-circle around the room, staring hard like a flock of disturbed birds. When they caught sight of Aizawa, none of them seemed particularly sure what to do, glancing between him and what could only have been the source of their agitation – at the center of the room, wandering amongst their desks, was a girl Aizawa had never seen before. Leisurely tracing her fingers over the surfaces. Chattering away in a muffled, convoluted tone, as though to everyone and nobody at all.

"Can I help you?" Aizawa demanded, voice a harsh reprimand.

The unknown student turned. Slow and snake-like, moving head first while her body followed. A short-cropped mass of curls, sickly pink and falling in all directions over her face. Head cocked to the side, eyes going round in a serpentine gaze, the girl revealed a mosaic of sharply jutting teeth. A smile, as though she were thoroughly pleased by Aizawa's arrival. "_Oh_~ I'm sorry. I didn't know this was your class," she said. A strange undulation in her words, a syrupy soprano that rose and fell at all the wrong times. She slinked around to face Aizawa fully, arms doing an exaggerated circle. "Where is Rin-chan's office?"

"Excuse me miss, but that's no way to address a teacher," Iida piped in. "You ought to refer to our guidance counsellor as Chi-sensei."

The girl made a strange sound, glancing at Iida. "You're a funny one." Then back to Aizawa, repeating in an exact copy of her previous tone, "Where is Rin-chan's office?"

"Whose class are you in?" Aizawa questioned, taking a step towards the unfamiliar girl. Much too skinny in the uniform, just about falling out of the blazer and shoes. A first year? "You should be back there. Not looking for Chi-sensei."

She made a purring sort of noise. "But I _need _her."

"You're being a disruption," Aizawa said, and pointed towards the door. "Get out my class."

"You're meaner than I thought you'd be," the girl smirked, and began a tip-toe past Aizawa. As she did so, he whiffed a sickly sweet perfume – like rotten berries – and was suddenly overcome by a wave of nausea. It stemmed from his neck, sent a bright flare of pain into his eyes. So vivid, so sharp, he almost didn't hear the girl hiss at him. "I'll find Rin-chan on my own then. Bye bye everyone. Take good care of Eraser Head-chan for us."

His sickness lasted mere seconds. Regaining clarity, stunned by the fizzle of anxious aching, Aizawa spun towards the door. Out into the corridor, eyes darting from side to side in search of the student – but she was gone. Vanished like a specter into the expanse of the school building. A terrible dread ripped through Aizawa. Behind him, he heard Bakugo spit with equally disconcerted viciousness, "The hell was up with that fucking freak?"


	24. A Boy Named Yukio

Chapter 24  
A Boy Named Yukio

Rin clicked a pen in one hand, leaning her cheek against the other. With an unfocused pout, she glared at the unholy piles of paperwork before her. Huffing impatiently. Fidgeting in frustrated procrastination. For a long time, she didn't notice Aizawa at the door – and for a long time, he watched her, at leisure to do so because the final bell had rung and students had abandoned the school building. He leaned against the doorframe, hands buried deep in his pockets, and released a quiet sigh of relief.

Despite Rin's obvious agitation – softly whining, she lowered her head to the desk, pressed her forehead to a scattering of paper in a sluggish show of defeat – she was otherwise undisturbed: safe from unwelcome unpleasantries, oblivious to Class 2A's venomous little visitor.

In her bent position, she continued to click the pen in manic distraction. Flanked by overwhelming amounts of documentation and looking hopelessly despondent in a slump amongst the musk of Hound Dog's office. An abundance of light fell through the window overlooking the gardens, offering a certain warmth. However, it was all offset by the immensity of the filing cabinets and a jumble of trinkets and oddities, overtly masculine in their lack of colour or coordination. Just as Rin had seemed morbidly out-of-place amongst the lackluster untidiness of Aizawa's apartment, so too was the browned office-look unsuited to her airy radiance.

At the sight of it, Aizawa's mouth turned upwards in something of a half-smirk. He knocked at last. Rin twisted her head lethargically against the desk, sullen and deeply frowning.

"Seems like you've been busy," Aizawa said, closing the door behind himself as he stepped into the office. "You shouldn't look so enthusiastic. I'm sure Hound Dog has a lot more paperwork where all this came from."

A cooing sigh. "But there's already so much of it~" Straightening herself, Rin ran her fingers across a thick series of folders. "I still have to read through all of these and make my own notes on them before taking over for Hound Dog-sensei. He also had a really weird way of filing everything, so half the job is actually finding all the paperwork…" She withered into the chair, puckered her lips in flustered deliberation. "I also wanted to redecorate this office before I saw my first students tomorrow. It's so ugly in here, it's distracting. Just look at that picture."

Following the direction in which Rin gestured, Aizawa was confronted by a large painting of dogs playing poker. A darkened room like a seedy bar, canine faces scrunched in deliberation over their cards. Deep colours and harsh brush strokes – disconcerting. Aizawa raised his eyebrows as he said, "Hound Dog has an interesting taste in art." He didn't linger long over the picture though, instead taking a seat opposite Rin. "You're already going to start seeing students?"

She gave a chime-like _mmm-hmm_. "Four of them."

"Don't you think that happened rather too quickly?"

"Maybe," Rin lifted her shoulders daintily. "But at this stage, I think they're probably more curious than anything else, so it should be fine. _Anyway_~" lips parting into a grin, she leaned forward onto her elbows, "Do you need something?"

Mere hours before, Aizawa would have needed nothing other than to see her, purely irrational in his sentimentality and slightly jarred by the agitation it caused him. He would probably have made up some poor excuse, fumbling over half-truths in an attempt to streamline his fondness, and Rin would probably have seen through him with all the clarity of a crystal ball. It came as something of a relief then, that now he did indeed have a reason for being with her. That it was not simply besotted restlessness which drove his actions, and that he could more comfortably rationalize his sneaking into the privacy of her office.

"Someone infiltrated the school today," Aizawa said, deliberate and measured, gauging Rin for a reaction. "I've already reported it to Nezu, and the security team is supposed to be assessing the situation right now. It looks like said someone stole a uniform from the gym lockers to parade around as a student."

Rin raised her eyebrows. Tapping her fingers along her cheeks, she hummed quietly. "What do you think they wanted?"

"They were looking for you."

She dropped her hands slowly, like white flowers wilting, and her features curdled into an indecipherable mask. Blinking once, twice again, she parted her lips without the faintest echo of a word – and as she stared at Aizawa, he saw in the greens of her eyes a murky poignancy. Swirling. Hesitant. He edged himself forward, leaning his own arms onto the desk in a near-closeness with Rin's, and met her gaze with new insistence.

"It was a girl with pink hair. Creepy and kind of malnourished-looking," he said, chilled by the memory of the unnamed girl. The white flash of pain as she'd left his classroom in a snake-like glide. The decaying sweetness with which she'd said his hero name. "Sound familiar?"

"I– There's–" Swallowing harshly against nothing, Rin turned her attention away from Aizawa. "If it's who I'm thinking of, then it's…uh… just someone who worked with me – at the Voodoo Agency, I mean. I haven't heard from them since everything happened."

To this, Aizawa narrowed his eyes. He'd never come across the girl in all his years as a hero. "Voodoo hired a child?"

"He's actually my age."

"_He_?"

A loaded sigh, one which seemed to send a limp tremble through Rin's body. "It's very weird and very, very complicated," she said. "But you don't have to worry about him, he's pretty much harmless. Sneaky though. I'm not surprised he managed to get into the school unnoticed." None of this quelled the anxiety settling in Aizawa's gut. Rin's eyes fell upon him once more, and when she spoke again it was in hushed desperation, almost like a plead. "What did he say to you?"

"Only that she – he – needed you." What Aizawa didn't mention, faced by the creeping contortion in Rin's demeanor, was the ominous hiss to the girl-boy's words: the menacing intonations, the saccharine threat of a child's violent delights.

Rin's expression didn't waver, though her fingers tensed against the surface of the desk. She inched them towards Aizawa's. "Anything else?"

"No."

"_Nothing at all_?"

"What aren't you telling me, Rin?" Snaking his own fingers against hers – a stirring shock pulsing along the flesh of his hand as he did so – Aizawa leaned in, voice low in a rough attempt to be lulling. "How is this child connected to you?"

The already-insipid colour drained itself further from Rin's face, leaving her looking like snowless winter. "I've already told you. They worked–"

"There's more to it than that," Aizawa interrupted. He took Rin's hand more fully in his, cocooning the fine shape of her fingers in a firm and unyielding hold, and met her disoriented stare unabashedly. She grappled against a quavering breath; he held her attention. "You said a little while ago that you wouldn't tell me because you didn't want to depend on me. But I'm saying now that you're not safe on your own, and I'm not about to see you put yourself in unnecessary danger. So either you will tell me now–"

"Aizawa-sensei…" Rin murmured, lips beginning to quiver. "_Shouta_… Please stop."

And as much as the sound of his name on her voice crashed all through him with all the force of drowning fantasies, Aizawa pressed onwards, "–or you'll tell me tonight. You're going to be moving into the 2A dormitory with immediate effect. Nezu has already signed off on that, so I'll go with you now to get whatever you might need from my apartment."

The look on Rin's face was a landscape of impossibilities. Eyes growing wide, but their colour flat and impenetrable. Trembling fingers, though her lips were held tightly in a taut, pale line. Beneath the material of her turtleneck sweater, Aizawa saw the tendons in her neck stiffen and relax, stiffen and relax again. She looked about ready to say something, mouth twitching in miniscule directions, and Aizawa knew she would object. For whatever flustered reason, she'd protest and demur and make the whole thing much more difficult than it needed to be.

Gently, Aizawa stroked the flesh of her hand with his thumb. Then he let go. "I'll see you at the main entrance in half an hour."

* * *

Perhaps realising the futility of argument, Rin offered Aizawa silent sulks all through the trip to the apartment – where she then crept about in resigned indecision, taking an age to gather clothes and her laptop and other necessities – as well as back to the school. Appalled as he was by her displeasure though, Aizawa didn't attempt to smooth over her mood. He accepted her hush, resisted the urge to touch her lest she should manipulate such vulnerabilities in her favour.

He forced his focus onto other things, such as the girl who was actually a boy who was actually a man, as well as (perhaps more importantly for the moment) how he would introduce the matter of Rin's new residence to his class.

At the dormitory, her unpleasant blandness melted away under the curious eyes of Class 2A. Aizawa's students seemed to pay very little attention to his attempts at explanation – _Lady Chi has temporarily been assigned to this dormitory_. Instead, they ogled Rin as though she were a rare and precious commodity. Exotic animal. Fine art. Iida offered her a guided tour – because four floors of bedrooms and a common area would apparently be very difficult for Rin to wrap her head around – after which the girls breezed her off in a delighted flurry to show her where she'd be staying.

Mineta seemed much too pleased.

Bakugo was quieter than usual.

And until much later into the evening, Aizawa didn't see Rin again.

Only after lights out, when things were so quiet around the house that Aizawa could just about hear her fairy-light footsteps across the floor, did his door creak open. He turned from his computer, alight and burning with the template of a report card, his only source of light, and watched Rin's head peer hesitantly into the room. Hair in a wet and haphazard bun. Purple shadows hanging deeply around her eyes. For some moments, neither of them said anything. Rin lingered in the doorframe, unsure of herself and swaying slightly, looking ominously ethereal in the blue glow of the computer.

It was with something of a grimace, gentle and melancholy, that she finally spoke. "Can I come in?"

"Yes," Aizawa murmured. "Please do."

As though trying not to make a sound, she closed the door behind her with tentative slowness. Glancing across the room, wandering through the darkness to seat herself on the edge of the bed, she seemed coy and unfocused, looking around at the empty and undecorated space for the sake of not looking at Aizawa – and by this, he felt a terrible chasm open itself up between his lungs. Lonely silence. Safe obscurity. Rin's fingers fidgeted in her lap, pulling at the sleeve of her sweater and scratching in her palms. She drew sharp, uneven breaths. Biting her lip. Tilting her head from one shoulder to the other.

Her uneasiness was wounding, and when the phantom greens of her eyes at last settled upon Aizawa, the ache through his ribcage made him certain he could kiss her without so much as bothering about the answers he'd previously wanted.

Indeed, he almost did. He _almost _took her cheeks in his hands and _almost_ pulled her against him – except, she cleared her throat, straightened her shoulders in a graceful attempt at composure before he could do so.

"I'll answer three questions," Rin said.

Aizawa scoffed. "Since when did you become a genie?"

"Three questions," Rin repeated with a delicate scowl, ignoring Aizawa's banter. "As long as they're fair and as long as they're specific, I'll tell you as much as I can."

In the silence that followed, she watched him, poised and somber as a criminal on trial. For this, she'd steeled herself, and Aizawa realised for the first time the sort of trust she must have been placing in him. Even for only three questions, even if they'd be answered in as narrow and as vague an explanation as possible, Rin was scraping away at her own walls. For his sake.

Aizawa sighed. "Fine." He wheeled his chair closer to the bed so that he could consider her features more carefully, so that he could smell the fresh scent of her shampoo and skin. Three questions. Was there a way he could condense everything he wanted to know into such a small window? "That kid – person – thing. Who are they and why have I never seen them before?" A pause. "That counts as one question with subheadings."

Licking her lips, Rin's stare deepened. "That was Yukio," she said through a pastel detachment. "I told you he worked at the agency with me, but it was always very hush-hush. Most other pros don't know about him because he's technically not officially hired – I mean, he never went to school and is mentally – umm–" she touched her fingers to her neck, "–he's troubled. Doctor Voodoo pulled a lot of strings to get permission to take Yukio on as a sort of temporary sidekick because he's got a useful quirk."

It was an answer which opened a whole other can of worms. Troubled. Useful quirk. Aizawa chose his next question uncertainly. "Why was he looking for you?"

"Yukio and I met when we were kids." Though the words came out with practiced swiftness, there was a crinkling to Rin's body. It made Aizawa's heart plunge, made him adore her more. She cleared her throat. "Something bad happened to him, and he clung onto me as a sort of… I don't know… but you know what I mean. A sort of big sister, you could say." A shuffling. A sigh. "He disappeared for a while, but when I started working for Doctor Voodoo – there he was. And it was like nothing had changed. He looked the same. He did act a little weirder, but that's something I'd expect, and he's never wanted to leave me alone."

"Can I ask you something that won't count as my third question?"

Through the darkness, it was possible to see Rin raise her eyebrows, her lips turning down into a thoughtful frown. "That depends."

"Why the hell does a man your age look like a child and act like a girl?" Aizawa demanded, sounding more disgusted than he'd meant to.

As though with interest, Rin hummed. "Sometimes, kids who experience a serious trauma stop growing," she said, and Aizawa could hear in her voice the smooth adoption of her counsellor-tone. Cool. Collected and factual. "It's evolutionary, apparently – the body diverts its resources to more important things. It doesn't want to put energy into growing when it might have to fight or runaway. Things are supposed to go back to normal when the trauma or stress goes away, but with Yukio…" She crossed her legs, uncrossed them again. "His body just went haywire. Hormones and brain activity would probably also explain why he acts like he does."

"I see." Knowing the psychology didn't make it any less weird. With one last question, Aizawa came closer once more. He lifted a hand, ran it against Rin's arm. "This Yukio. Is he somehow connected to everything that's happened? Everything that's happened to you?"

A long time passed, and Rin didn't say anything. Against the glow of the computer, a strange haze came over her features. Wraithlike and soft. The question had struck a nerve.

"Rin."

A tremble travelled through her limbs. Beneath his fingers, Aizawa felt it with chilling clarity. "Sort of," she mumbled at last. "Sometimes, Yukio gets overexcited and loses control of his mouth. No one ever really paid much attention to things he said because, well, you know. He's sort of mad in the head – but he would say things to me, and even occasionally do things that just made me really anxious…" Her voice was quieter now: far-off and unsteady. "He always referred to Doctor Voodoo as his 'better dad'. It creeped me out, because Doctor Voodoo _did _have this weird... _thing_. Like, he's always been overly familiar and sort of condescending, but I figured that maybe I was just too reserved, you know?"

"Yes. I know."

"Anyway, I tried not to think about it too much, but I started noticing dynamics and patterns in the agency. One thing that really got to me was that Doctor Voodoo only hired people with fucked up childhoods. But by fucked up, I mean the kind of stuff that shouldn't be on official records. I started digging and it… I just… Everything got weirder and weirder." She clasped her hand over Aizawa's. Her fingers shook with a new violence and as she continued, the words grew more and more convoluted by the choked, watery sound of struggle. Her answer became disconnected. Rin's tongue fell over the syllables with a heavy, reluctant potency.

Aizawa stopped listening when it all came to be punctuated by her sobs.

He threw himself from the chair to the bed. Took Rin's slender, quaking frame in his arms and held her against him: her hair along his cheek, her face in his neck where he felt his own skin grow wet beneath her tears. One hand around her back and the other against her nape, Aizawa pressed his lips to her forehead in a desperate attempt at comfort and tried to make her stop talking. Fruitless murmurings on his part. _You don't need to cry. You don't need to say anymore. Please just stop_. Crying women were not Aizawa's forte, and he'd clearly walked both himself and Rin into a helpless vulnerability. One which he really should have been better prepared for.

Her previous reserve having fallen away, Rin muttered somethings of all sorts into Aizawa's skin. "I found out – and then Doctor Voodoo – no – he – Kizashi – Kizashi got so angry, and he wouldn't stop screaming – and then Yukio wouldn't stop crying – and the other three from the agency – they only wanted to help – _they only wanted to help_, but I got scared, and they got killed because of me – _because of me_–"

The name Aizawa managed to pick out from her jumble of words, Kizashi, was familiar somehow. He tried to place it. Tried but failed, overcome as he was by the miserable crumble of Rin's body next to his. She clutched his shirt, buried her head into her shoulder as though to in hopes of disappearing entirely.

"I'm sorry," she whimpered. "_I'm so sorry, Shouta_."

"It's fine. It's okay - I'm here."

And though it was all perfectly silent, Rin didn't stop crying for a long time.


	25. The Adventures of Rin & Class 2A

Chapter 25  
The Adventures of Rin & Class 2A

_03:00 A.M. _

For the first time in months, Aizawa snoozed his alarm.

Not to say he'd been sleeping, of course – on the contrary, he'd tossed and turned in a battle against the bedsheets all night, mind restless with a thousand and one thoughts. Catastrophizing and rationalizing in an incessant cycle, replaying Rin's every word and reading into every intonation for unspoken clues, hints, mysteries. Nonetheless, he continued to lie there: a growing numbness in his shoulder, blinking against his eyes' dryness. In a graceless tangling of limbs and material, Rin was lined against him. Steady, shallow breaths. One hand under his shirt, the other angled in an awkward bend between their bodies.

It was hard to say how long it had been before she'd fallen asleep. A stuttering, wet-faced mess, Rin had sobbed for what seemed to be hours – Aizawa was quite sure that even when she did drift out into unconsciousness, the tears had continued. She was quieter than usual. Strangely still too, in a thin façade of sleep, and she didn't so much as flinch when Aizawa granted himself the pleasure of pressing his face into the knotted curling of her hair.

_03:05 A.M._

He snoozed the alarm again.

_03:10 A.M. _

A third time – which was when Rin's body coiled itself more deeply against his. Stiffly, with all the slow uncertainty of a budding flower, she lifted her head from its place against Aizawa's shoulder to stare through the darkness. At the clock. At Aizawa himself, disorientated or dismayed in her dewy haze. "Do you always get up this early?" she mumbled after a while, lips close to his cheek, the breathy warmth of her words carrying across his skin in a swarm of goosebumps.

"Yes, to train. I have no time otherwise." Influenced by the miserable lack of sleep as well as by tenderness, his words were slurred and nearly inaudible.

Rin gave a quiet snort. "How horrid."

"It's necessary."

"The worst things always are, aren't they?" She lowered her head again, hair falling in a stunning contrast against Aizawa's shirt – like white silk upon coarse blackness. Aizawa recurved his arm around her and weaved his fingers through the strands. Ever taken aback by such thin softness, watching her hair drop from his hand back to her shoulders in airy waves. When Rin didn't move again for some time, he thought perhaps she'd gone back to sleep – but then, in a dejected whisper, she spoke, "I'm sorry."

Aizawa saw no reason for her to be sorry and so he said nothing, only turning with a heavy grunt to dismiss his alarm as it went off once again: _03:15 A.M._

Rin seemed to flinch at the movement or at the shrill, despicable sound. She sat up, curled her knees to her chest. "I didn't mean to fall asleep."

"I don't mind," Aizawa said quickly.

"And there was no reason for me to cry."

"There's hardly ever a reason to cry." He sat up with her, muscles rigid from being uncomfortably twisted to accommodate Rin's abnormal and exaggerated sleeping positions. Fond and somehow self-conscious, he traced his finger down her back. Along the flimsy material of her t-shirt, stirringly aware of her spine's delicate undulation. "But I still don't mind. A lot has happened, and you've been keeping it all to yourself. It would take a toll on any sane person."

A gentle shuffling. A murmuring sigh. "Maybe, I guess~" Rin looked at him, lips bowing into a half-moon smile. She took Aizawa's hand, measured her own against it with a distracted wistfulness. "Do you _have to _get up now? It's probably freezing outside – and it's still so dark."

"As I said, this is the only time I have to train."

A sugarcoated hum, smooth and hushing, echoed out from Rin's throat, and she slid herself closer to Aizawa. The bedsheets crinkled. Her thigh, flimsily concealed by pajama pants, pressed itself alongside his. "You know," Rin cooed – and in spite of the darkness, Aizawa could see her lips part into a dazed grin – "I can think of a few of other ways to exercise that would be a lot more fun for both of us. You wouldn't even have to leave the bed."

Aizawa rolled his eyes at her. "You're not really supposed to be in this room, let alone sharing a bed with me. You shouldn't be making suggestions like that." And though he said this flatly, it was with a reluctant resolve. A pained determination. Heavily as the night's hours had weighed themselves upon him, Aizawa could think of nothing better than abandoning his morning routine for the lazy, sensual delights of what Rin was proposing. Indeed, it set his spine aching with a creeping sensitivity – one which grew fuller and more voracious as Rin pouted playfully.

She leaned in, tilted her head at him in the coy way of a kitten. "_Please_, Shouta?"

There it was again. His name, her voice, the agony of the combination as it drove him to clasp her nape lightly and pull her into a kiss under the cover of satin darkness. Chaste, though his lips lingered over hers just long enough to bring Aizawa's lulling excitement close to pain. Rin sank into him with all the gleeful innocence of a flower in the rain, and he could feel her mouth curl faintly into a smile. She touched her fingers to his cheek; he brought his fingers to hers – and when he pulled away, committing to memory for what seemed to be the thousandth time the vulnerable softness of her alongside him, he muttered into her skin, "Not now – but maybe next time, when there aren't twenty-one teenagers around to hear us."

It was with an unabashed flush that Rin watched Aizawa dress, and though she groaned when the time came to make the bed, she slinked out from between the sheets without resistance. Barefooted on the floor, rumpled and cozy in her oversized pajamas – she told Aizawa she was cold; he dropped one of his sweaters over her head, brooding in silence over how horrendously endearing it was: even considering the harshness of black against her porcelain features, the ridiculous size of his clothing over her frame .

She, with that tossed, early-morning look, was an ideal sort of happiness all on her own.

And indeed, she was a happiness which spilled over into the rest of the week: glimpses of white hair and flowing material in the corridors; coffee in the teachers' lounge, the two of them seated across from each other in a sensible but poor attempt at acting natural under the stares of the other teachers; the unreasonable pangs in Aizawa's chest when, in charmed wanderings from class to class, he would happen past Rin's office to find the door closed. All of it marvelously thrilling and dreadfully irrational – for even in the deepest, most unshakable part of himself, rationality was useless when confronted by the sheer immensity of whatever it was he felt for Rin. And the strange thing was, Aizawa didn't mind it so much, this pleasure at her nearness.

To a certain extent, he was even unbothered by Yamada and Kayama's teasing, more subtle when Rin was nearby, ruthless when she was not – _Aizawa-sensei-kun, have you been enjoying your private lessons with the new guidance counsellor? Are you and her very thorough in your after-hours biology lessons, hmm? She's an A+ angel, Aizawa. You get full marks for your taste in women! Yeeeeah! _Mortifying as it was, Aizawa made little attempt to stop it, realising both the futility and the truth behind the (at times, heavily inappropriate) gags.

There was one thing that did prove to be disconcerting though, and it was something which perhaps stemmed from Aizawa's own affection for Rin as well as her mystical and almost inexplicable appeal to children – Class 2A's candid fascination with her.

During school hours, she made a single appearance during their Foundational Hero Studies period to observe the lesson. Part of her initiation into the role of guidance counsellor apparently, something which she was expected to do for every class in the school – and though she was by all accounts a perfectly discrete presence, watching with absorbed silence as team exercises were carried out, Aizawa's students paid an exorbitant amount more attention to her than they did to any of All Might's instructions or corrections. Riveted, they asked for her opinions and her thoughts on strategies and why she had to be there to watch them – and no matter how Aizawa shooed them away, flicking his hands as though they were insects or small pests, they would always scurry back eventually.

And God forbid Aizawa himself paid any attention to Rin – which, inevitably, he did, though in no degree more than any other teacher would have. Like a school of confused goldfish in a bowl, his students would gawk and whisper. Mineta would glare suspiciously. The girls would giggle.

On an evening in the middle of the week, when Aizawa came back to the dorms late, there was a terrible racket in the kitchen. It was the girls' turn to cook, and he feared for the worst; frankly, he always did when it came to his students cooking dinner, images of the dormitory up in flames or all twenty-one of them keeled over with deadly food poisoning haunting his thoughts. But it was only Rin at the stove – accompanied by the gusts of Heaven that were the scents of her cooking – as well as the 2A girls swarmed in a circle around her. Laughing, talking loud about nonsense Aizawa couldn't make sense of.

And though that night he told Rin she was under no obligation to cook for the dormitory, that there was no need for her to win over his students by pandering to their whims and showering them in domestic comforts, she only touched the tip of her finger to his nose in an affectionate tap. Smirking sweetly. Purring into his ear, "I was just teaching them to make something new, not selling them my soul."

The night after that, Sado and some of the girls from 2B also squeezed themselves into the kitchen to 'learn how to cook'.

Every day, Mineta insisted on new states of mental anguish – "Of course, this is something I simply _must _go see the guidance counsellor about, Aizawa-sensei."

Koda showed Rin his pet rabbit. He even went so far as to let her hold it.

Bakugo developed a mysterious obsession with dried apricots.

All of this accumulated to an overwhelming sense of disorientation within Aizawa. Naturally, he wasn't so surprised by the fact that his class liked Rin – considering the state of enamored adoration he himself had been reduced to – but the extent of it was not what he had expected. The way they hovered obtrusively around Rin, so painfully engrossed by her like infants by a sharp and shiny object. Though Aizawa tried hard to maintain his professional indifference, swallowing against the effects of Rin's novelty upon Class 2A, their enjoyment of her was at the expense of his own – and so by the end of the week, he was ready to throttle them all.

Despite the easiness of devising some pretext to get her alone, despite the number of times their hands had come _so close _to touching in the corridors, someone from Class 2A was always there – sheepish grins, wrecking everything as they wedged themselves between Aizawa and Rin in both the literal as well as the figurative sense. Tokoyami, grimly thanking her for the book recommendation. Iida, wanting to ensure that she was settling into the school alright (on behalf of Class 2A). Mineta, woeful in the face of his new and obscure mental illness.

Now it was Friday morning, and Aizawa was chewing through a discussion on the upcoming Culture Festival. Going through the motions, bland and unenthusiastic as he watched the clock inch onwards. There were only two weeks to go, and by this stage there shouldn't have been any questions on or around the event – nonetheless, as was his sworn duty, Aizawa opened the floor. Waited for hands to go up, though for a long time none did: his students only stared at him expectantly, backs erect in their chairs. A perfect silence, though ominous somehow, a swelling pressure growing above their heads.

In the face of it, Aizawa was about to dismiss them, which was when Iida's hand shot into the air with all the militant force of excitement. He stood, eyes narrowed behind his glasses in determination, and no one besides Aizawa looked at him.

"Aizawa-sensei! I have an important question, but it doesn't have to do with the Culture Festival!" Iida said, voice booming and choked.

Aizawa sighed, eager to end the period. "Well, if it's important–"

"Yes, sensei! Forgive me, sensei! This is not the type of question I would ask under normal circumstances, but for the sake of transparency and to avoid the spread of incorrect rumours, I as class representative have taken it upon myself to ask you this." Having said it all in a single breath, Iida paused. Composed himself, pushing his glasses back up his nose in a smooth chopping motion. "You see sensei, Bakugo has started seeing Chi-sensei for–"

"Don't mention my name, shitty glasses!" Bakugo fumed, exploding in his chair to shoot a venomous glare at everyone and no one. "I don't give a fuck about any of this! It's everyone else who's been making a big fucking stink–"

"Bakugo!" Iida cried. "Please refrain from using such language in the classroom!"

"I'll use whatever fucking language I want!"

"Calm down," Aizawa hissed, and watched as Bakugo spun back to face the front.

Iida cleared his throat, straightened his shoulders into even more of an impossibly taut line. "As I was saying sensei, Bakugo recently went to see Chi-sensei, and following his counselling session–"

"I wasn't there for counselling!"

"– Chi-sensei gave him a note, and it was brought to our attention that said note had a smiley face on it, sensei. The same smiley face some of us have gotten on our recent assignments. As such, after considerable debate amongst ourselves, we as a class have resolved that we _must _ask you this question for the sake of transparency and–"

"You're repeating yourself," Aizawa said, and though no question had as yet been asked, it was obvious what was coming. A stirring electricity surged through Aizawa's spine; it took all his clarity of mind to maintain a decent attempt at distance. "Please be rational and get to the point."

In a fumbling tumble of words, Iida most certainly did not get to the point. Instead, his face only darkened into a comical shade of red while his glasses went hazy behind an embarrassed fog. He apologised again, began to emphasise his stuttered sounds and shouts with the chopping motion of his hand. Eventually, in a grimacing exasperation, Yaoyorozu stood up as vice-representative to take Iida's place. "Aizawa-sensei, please forgive us if this is too much of an intrusion, but we'd like to know if you're seeing Chi-sensei."

"I see Chi-sensei here at the school every day."

Yaoyorozu's brow furrowed, and it was possible to hear a generalized groan around the room. "In a romantic sense, Aizawa-sensei."

His uncertainty in the face such questioning must certainly have been palpable, as though he had been cornered by a pack of rabid puppies. With the hopeless and irrational anxiety of one who had never been confronted by such a situation before and was now being forced to improvise, Aizawa said nothing. Only glanced over the eager, wide faces of his students with stiff featured hardness.

* * *

**A/N: A more light-hearted chapter. As usual... WHAT WILL AIZAWA DO NEXT? :O  
Follow, favourite, and revieeeew. 3**


	26. Friends & Lovers

**A/N: OMW you guys, thank you so much for the reviews on the last chapter! They were all such a pleasure to read! ^-^ Hope you enjoy all this next one... It's a goodie. ;)**

Chapter 26  
Friends & Lovers

He stewed over his coffee for several minutes, glaring into the swirling blackness with an unfamiliar sense of discomposure. The lunch hour ticked by slowly, agonizingly so, and Aizawa grew restless while waiting for Yamada – he strained his ears in spite of himself, affronted by the silence while knowing full-well that he needn't be listening so closely for his friend's arrival.

Of course, despite Yamada's all-engulfing presence, it was also a peculiar ability of his to not be around when Aizawa needed him. A pitiless coincidence, really, one which could be blamed on no one and resolved by nothing – nonetheless, it vexed Aizawa. Enough so that, by the time Yamada did eventually arrive in the teachers' lounge, flouncing in with noisy obliviousness, Aizawa was helplessly aloof and in half-a-mind to abandon his initial endeavor completely.

As per the usual fashion, after making his rounds to greet the other teachers, Yamada flung himself into his chair. Spinning casually, crossing his ankles one over the other as he grinned at Aizawa – "Phew! What a week, right?" – before taking a large gulp of the energy drink on his desk. For a time, he prattled on in a chirping monologue: his class's plans for the Culture Festival, his radio show, a fancy red car he was looking at buying. Scattered energies without any sense of disengagement. Harmless inanities, to which Aizawa hummed and muttered responses with half-hearted interest, feeling almost guilty that he should be so self-absorbed and that, after having failed to reply to a chattering joke, Yamada should notice.

Without losing the slightest hint of his liveliness, Yamada cocked his head teasingly. "Why so distant, Aizawa? Guidance counsellor got your tongue?"

"Something like that," Aizawa grumbled. "Sorry."

"And now you're actually apologizing. The girl's really done a number on you."

A number, indeed. And apparently it was general knowledge – that Aizawa, without any conscious decision but rather by the sling-shot absurdity of emotions, was practically delirious: chest buzzing and alight like a bee under a glass. Until then, Aizawa hadn't felt so painfully stupid for it; before then, the whole thing had felt right. Comfortable in its privacy. Straightforward. But now, through thoughtless slips of affection and mood, the waters had become murky and everyone (including a bunch of teenagers) seemed to have more of an idea of what was going on than Aizawa himself did.

There was a new urgency in the air – sharp and confusing, debilitating, and he couldn't figure out why.

"Yamada."

"Yes, yes, my man?"

"Is it that obvious?"

With an amused huff, Yamada raised his eyebrows. "About as obvious as your disregard for a razor." He laughed at himself. "Why do you ask?"

Disgruntled by the memory, Aizawa brought his coffee cup to his lips, speaking into it as though with the hopeless hope of not being heard. "My class asked about Rin today. They figured out that the smiley faces on their assignments were from her."

Yamada leaned in, interest thoroughly piqued. "And what did you say?"

"Nothing. I dismissed them all without giving an answer."

"How cruel, Aizawa! Leaving your little ones high and dry like that!" Yamada pulled an exaggerated face, tutting his finger for emphasis. However, quick to flit between topics, he didn't linger long on such an issue of child abuse. "I'm not all that surprised though. Watching you and Hiruma-chan is like watching a dog chase its tail, ya dig? Whenever she's around you get this _look _– you know, all soft and squishy like – and your class is smart enough to have noticed. The smiley face thing was probably just their most concrete evidence, but I bet they've all seen how lovey-dovey you get around her."

Aizawa grunted. "I'm not lovey-dovey."

"_Yeah_ you are! You get _extra _quiet and faraway, and you look at her like she's the moon, or the cutest little kitten you did ever see." All true, and Aizawa could do nothing to deny it – because really, he'd fallen hard for Rin just as much as summer fell for autumn. Yamada, apparently engrossed by the sound of his own voice, nodded to himself as he continued, "_Yeeeeah! _Seems pretty lovey-dovey to me. But what exactly did your class ask you?"

"They wanted to know if I'm seeing her."

"And?" Yamada prompted. "Aren't you?"

Was he? It had all happened very fast – it was only a week ago that the two of them had tumbled into bed together in a drunken mess of skin and desperate kisses. Only a week ago? The timeline didn't seem right somehow, jumbled amongst the pastel montage of Rin's sugar-whiteness, and cool wind blowing through the bedroom window onto Aizawa's flesh, setting goosebumps against the sweat of it, and cups of coffee, and secretive, attentive murmurings amongst the bedsheets.

In that short frame of time, all pretenses of unfamiliarity had somehow fallen away and Aizawa felt both defenseless and exhilarated before the fact that Rin was more his than she'd ever been.

Of course, the interplay between past and present had become a source of pleasure for Aizawa as well. There was a new fascination to be had from the blurred, fuzzy memories of sixteen-year-old Rin, in all her quiet isolation and stuttering gracelessness; more than that, Aizawa relished the sheer improbability of the exquisite, metamorphosed version of her – that he should be the one to drink in it, tasting lips that not so long ago would have been thoroughly off-limits and adoring every aspect of her, her, her.

All the thousands of tiny ways she'd bared her soul – the books she read, the food she ate, how she would fidget and mumble and pluck restlessly because a busy mind made for busy fingers – red-wine stains on her lips, freckles like flecks of spice across her cheeks. She walked with her weight on her toes, and rarely brushed her hair, and bore an unsurprising contempt for sunlight. Always unexpected, always new. Even if she didn't realise it, even if she didn't mean to reveal such small and seemingly insignificant parts of herself, these tiny acts of surrender had set the entirety of Aizawa's being in a mad tumble over her. Rin! Tender, lovely, infectious Rin!

No denying it. No need to, really. Aizawa hadn't ever cared for the likes of romance and silly, maudlin doting; but with Rin, the thought of her, the things she stirred within the depths of himself Aizawa hadn't known existed…

She was like everything he'd ever lost brought back to him.

All this, and yet he hadn't once thought to put a name to what he felt. Yamada watched him, glasses lowered so that the excitable greens of his eyes could be ever more piercing. "Well?"

Were they actually a couple? "I don't know."

"Well, you might want to put a ring on that finger, snap-snap." Yamada, smirking, clicked his fingers for emphasis. "Otherwise, one of our students will probably snatch her out from beneath your nose." He paused, considering his words, and then chuckled shrilly. "Hah! Wouldn't that be ironic!? By the way, some of us are going out for drinks this evening. I've already invited Hiruma-chan, and I told her you'd be there – so you can't say no. Really, it would just be selfish of you not to come."

* * *

During the staff meeting at the end of the day, Rin sat close to Principal Nezu and faraway from Aizawa. Saying little but always with that engaged, gossamer sweetness. Every now and then, she would offer Aizawa a fleeting glance, a smile like a secret, and he would almost smile back. _Almost_, were it not for the fact that the other teachers called her 'Hiruma-chan' and directed their attention to her with a strange, soft sensitivity. As though she were breakable and precious – still a child. It irked Aizawa immensely. It irked him more that Rin didn't seem to notice.

Worse still was that, after the meeting, Nezu wanted to see him. So while Kayama and Yamada roped Rin into catching a taxi to a nearby karaoke bar (fucking hell) with them – her own voice lost in the face of their insistence, Aizawa watching helplessly as her fumbled attempt at a _no _withered away into a reluctant _yes _– he was left to burn in impatience against the understated, careful conversation with Nezu.

The boardroom emptied until it was the two of them alone. Nezu, gesturing to a seat closer to him, seemed to wait for Aizawa to get comfortable again – a futile exercise, of course, since Aizawa couldn't help but sit on the edge of his seat, back straight and arms crossed as he swallowed down on his eagerness to be leaving alongside Rin – and when Nezu realised this, he crossed his paws atop the table and smiled softly. "How is Hiruma-chan settling into the dormitories?"

"Smoothly, it seems."

"The students like her."

"Very much so."

A crooning sort of hum, drawn-out and thoughtful. "My suggestion to move her into the 2A house was a good one then."

Aizawa nodded, "Naturally."

Indeed, though Aizawa couldn't say he hadn't thought of it himself, Rin living at the school was ultimately Nezu's solution – hearing about the Yukio girl-boy-man-person hadn't seemed to shock him much, and he'd been perfectly level-headed when confronted by the situation; however, Nezu had also been prompt in addressing Rin's situation _specifically_, all with enough urgent tenderness to have surprised Aizawa. Though Nezu hadn't asked any significant questions, Aizawa couldn't help but think he was missing something important. That behind the principal's quick-footed reshuffling, there was an ulterior motive (considering his reputation, this wouldn't exactly have come as the greatest of shocks).

With the beady-eyed intensity of knowing his own mind, Nezu leaned in, smile flat and unsettling. "And are you adjusting well to having Hiruma-chan here at the school, Eraser Head?"

Jolted, Aizawa couldn't keep his eyes from widening. "What?"

"My, my, perhaps I should rephrase that," Nezu said, voice a chuckle. "Hiruma-chan was always such an important student to you, I couldn't help but wonder how you're fairing with her as a fellow teacher. Call it a theoretical curiosity, but I'm sure your new closeness to her must be quite eye-opening…"

"I…" Aizawa tasted the words against his tongue, felt the sour flavour of suggestion over things just out of his reach, "…suppose."

Nezu's voice lowered conspiratorially, "Yes. Quite eye-opening indeed." He pounced off from his chair, toddled to look out the window like a powerful figure over his empire. "As I'd imagine, you'll probably find a new depth to Hiruma-chan you couldn't quite appreciate as her teacher – one which you'll be surprised you didn't notice sooner. I hope you do, Eraser Head." A thoughtful pricking to his ears. "You'll realise just what it is that makes her quite so special."

Something unspoken lurked beneath the surface, prying its fingers through Nezu's words and lodging itself deep inside Aizawa's stomach. He shifted in his seat, felt a pinching sensitivity crawl along his neck and settle into his skull – _shit, _why now? – and for a long time, he stared at the unmoving outline of the principal's tidily-trimmed back. Nezu, for all his genius, was a straightforward man. Simple words for big concepts, clean-cut solutions for complex issues. What sort of toying sadism made him speak now in rhymes and riddles, as though Rin were a hieroglyph up for solving, Aizawa struggled to decide. He waited for an explanation he knew wouldn't come, edging himself deeper into a rattled disarray while also willing away the pain that loomed behind his eyes like a predator in wait.

"I'm not too sure what you're getting at," he said eventually, and Nezu turned around to gaze at him calmly. "Does this have to do with the fact that Rin – I mean Hiruma and I–" Aizawa considered his next words with care, realising the uncertainty of his own situation, "–are involved?"

With a sighing chuckle, Nezu shook his head, "Forgive me, Eraser Head. I realise all of that must have seemed very strange." He smoothed his collar. "While I'm well aware of your and Hiruma-chan's more personal relationship – and indeed, you make a lovely couple – what I'm referring to at this stage is something rather more… hmm, how shall I say? Rather more complicated than that." With a satisfied sway to his walk, Nezu wandered past Aizawa's seat and made for the door. "But that's all an issue for another time! I only wanted to check that Hiruma-chan is settling in alright – thank you for sparing a few minutes for me, Eraser Head. Have a good weekend."

He scurried out the boardroom, and Aizawa sat rooted to his seat for several long moments. Alone and bemused, feeling watched by an indiscernible presence, he groped at Nezu's words: all of it becoming foggier and more confused, a convoluted jigsaw of syllables and sound. It seemed that the longer he thought, the deeper and more insistently he tried to dig, the headache snaked its claws wider around his skull – poisoning, setting an ever hazier veil over Aizawa's focus.

It sapped his determination to think, dulled his attention to anything but the slow pain, until at last Aizawa left the room in a chaotic huff of complicated feeling.

* * *

Too distracted to drink properly – both because of the nauseating tangle in his gut and brain as well as Rin – Aizawa didn't partake in too much of the evening's festivity. Instead, from his place at the edge of the table, he stewed for a long time over his first beer. Long enough that it lost its cool sharpness and became unappealing. Watching Yamada, who bounced between karaoke and his own multitude of drinks, grow ever more slurred in his movement and conversation. Kayama: karaoke and shots and shameless attempts to drag everyone else onto the stage with her.

And Rin, who was wedged between All Might and Thirteen, looking both clumsy and enthralled by whatever it was the three of them were talking about. By the hand of some jealous god she was faraway again, and too engrossed for Aizawa to steal her to his end of the table. He didn't know how many drinks she'd had, but she never said no when Kayama came offering more spirits or more beer – and despite the smoky glaze of the light, Aizawa could see across her cheeks the blotchy discoloration like watercolour lilies. Swelling pinks flecked by red, shocking against her skin's whiteness. She looked hot, and flustered, and thoroughly preoccupied with making conversation, and all of it left Aizawa with a hollow dropping in his chest. Mawkish, like a sullen teenage boy.

Only when he reluctantly ordered a second beer did his luck change. Thirteen was dragged to the mic for a duet with Yamada, and All Might snuck out to take a phone call – and in a breezing breath of movement, Rin slinked to Aizawa's side. Eyes luminous and smiling, she came just close enough for her fingers to inch against his, white rosebuds whose coolness sent a thrilling relief through his bones.

"Are you going to sing?" she asked him.

"I'd rather die."

"Same." A sip of the sake Kayama had forced upon her some moments before. Then, beneath the table, her hand snaked itself over his thigh. "Is everything okay?"

Aizawa only shrugged, drinking deeply on his beer as he put his own hand over Rin's. Their fingers curled together, unseen but soothing, and Rin subtly shuffled closer. Not looking at him but at the stage, where Yamada flounced around Thirteen in a rhythmless attempt at a dance. Neither Aizawa nor Rin spoke, content in their silence amongst the noisy rush of the bar, hands remaining woven and concealed by the table. Any number of times though, unable to help himself, Aizawa stole looks at her and sighed to himself. So beautiful, so finely smooth and glowing like ivory in the rich golden light.

They let go of each other's hands when everyone else returned to the table. Rin shuffled away to open the space between them, and after another round of sake was ordered for the table – intermingled with choppy, overwhelming conversation – Yamada stood to make a toast, dizzyingly eying the space between Aizawa and Rin as he did so. "To new friends! And to new lovers!"

At something so unabashedly absurd, Aizawa choked on his beer.

* * *

Rin cuddled up to him the moment they climbed into the taxi home. Smelling slightly of smoke over her usual perfumes, drowsy and quiet, she leaned her head onto Aizawa's shoulder. Clasped his hand more tightly in hers – and then, within seconds of the car beginning to move, she fell asleep, and Aizawa was left to gaze out the window at the passing streetscapes: the ghostly glow of lonely streetlamps, leaves being blown about by late night winds. Forsaken corners of darkness like the recesses of memory.

Inevitably, quiet and dazed by the weight of Rin's presence (his alone _at_ _last_!), Aizawa returned constantly to the conversation with Nezu, and to his students' question, and to the way his heart traded between light-headed slowness and a fluttering dash. Despite the harried fluctuations in pulse though, the feeling behind it all was as steady and pure as the crisp autumn moon – complex with all the ghostly intermingling of truths and half-truths, but simpler still than anything Aizawa had felt before.

Simple, and undistilled. Perfect, in a way – _you'll find a new depth to Hiruma-chan you couldn't quite appreciate as her teacher_. Was this what Nezu meant? The utter loveliness of Rin as a woman, and the calm, unspoken intimacy into which they had slipped? The intimacy from which Aizawa never wanted to return?

"Shouta," Rin murmured.

"Mmm?"

She lifted her head slightly, cheek still nuzzled against his sleeve, and gazed at him through dreamily low lids. "You're hurting my hand."

He was clutching her fingers the same way one would on a lifeline. Rin gently slipped her hand out from his hold and cupped it around his cheek, twisting her head against his shoulder and moving her lips into his neck as she did so. Aizawa, in an uncertain shifting, noticed the taxi driver glance into the rearview mirror and away again.

"Something's bothering you," Rin said softly, straightening herself to sit upright.

"No. It's just been a strange day."

"Strange?"

"Strange," Aizawa repeated and turned to look at her more fully. Light from the street fell across her face in strobe-like succession, casting an array of mysterious shadows over the sylphish angles of her features. She watched him, suddenly perturbed or unhappy, and Aizawa pressed his palm into the curve of her neck. Warm, tensing beneath his touch. "Don't look so worried. It was nothing serious."

Under the discrete and flickering gaze of their taxi driver, things fell silent again.

Only when they arrived at the apartment building, climbing the stairs in an unhurried drag, did Rin say anything more – about the evening, how Yamada and Kayama were very sweet but very intimidating, and how she'd given so much concentration to making good conversation that she was sure she'd forgotten to breathe. Lots of people and lots of attention made her nervous: "like standing on a cliff-face," she said, "I kind of felt like I was going to pass out the whole time – but then you arrived, and everything was fine after that~"

The whole time, from the building's first floor up to the door, Aizawa made an attempt at being attentive but was much too focused on his own welling sense of desperation, akin to that of a dog before a bone. Rin gestured with her hands while she spoke, and so he couldn't hold them. She took lingering steps up the stairway, either too tired or too dizzy to go any faster, and with each moment Aizawa felt ever more foiled by such steady slowness. As though she was teasing him, dangling the possibility of their aloneness with all the lingering anticipation of a drug as it began to kick in.

And so, when at last they entered the apartment, Rin disappearing into the kitchen almost immediately, Aizawa shut and locked the door behind in a fumbling rush of keys and fingers.

He followed Rin, found her on her toes as she dug around one of the cabinets – "Did I take my last packet of dried apricots to the dorm?" – and at last free from the prying attention of others, he strode across the tiles with a piercing clarity of mind. Touching her waist. Heaving a breath as she turned to raise her eyebrows in questioning.

Aizawa grasped the back of her neck and, relishing the feel of her body going stiff at his closeness, pulled her into a kiss. Long, hard, feeling ever more starved and greedy as he tasted the echo of a long, lonely week on her lips. The motion of it was clumsy and terribly unprepared – mouths pressed together in a harsh smear, Rin squeaking slightly before she struggled to twist herself into his arms – but it set Aizawa's spine trembling with all the brazen desire the last days had lacked.

He pressed her hard against the kitchen counter. It could have been an accident or perfectly on purpose that Rin's teeth came down onto his lip, not quite gently, and before either of them had a chance to draw away for breath, Aizawa's hands were under her clothes. Grazing over the delicate curvature of her hips, her waist, her chest; tugging both her jersey and shirt away in a bulky balling of material. Rin's hands clutched at his scarf, both pulling him in and pushing him away in a confusion of tension. For a moment, she seemed to withdraw, parted her lips in a breathy attempt at speech – but Aizawa only drew her back into him, impatient and inexplicably anxious, feeling that at any moment some intrusion or unfair obligation would break the spell and she'd slip out from his fingers once again.

Tongues gliding along each other's in a greedy meeting of wet, heavy muscle, he couldn't repress a groan. He grasped both her wrists, tiny and flimsy, in one hand, lifting her onto the kitchen counter with the other. Her neck before him, her exposed and vulnerable torso in all its pristine, white architecture – the only barrier was her bra, a lacy cupping of pink; and as pretty a picture as it was, Aizawa didn't bother to relish the sight before taking it off.

Her wrists still held in his grip, he leaned in to trace his tongue down her neck – tempted to graze his teeth against the tendons, tasting the vaguest flavour of sweat as he moved to suck on the balcony of her collar bone. To kiss and lick and nibble the boney curvature, until at last he traced his mouth over her breasts. Rin's hands quivered against his own, and she gasped quietly as he took a nipple between his teeth. Aizawa lingered there, almost smug as she struggled to pull her wrists from his grasp, and he flicked his tongue gently against her sensitive, pink flesh. His name: a trembling murmur off her lips, the sound of it greedy and making him greedy too.

When at last he let go of her hands, feeling them flutter to tangle themselves into his hair, Aizawa lowered his head further to plant kisses against Rin's ribcage. Gentle, up and down the jagged pattern of scarring with special tenderness – these little marks, the pain behind them, his alone to savor and see and brush with his lips. Secrets once hidden and now his to know. Not flaws but adornments, beautiful oddities even if they made Rin cringe.

She did so now, and muttered Aizawa's name.

He hummed into her skin, resisted her hand as it pressed against his shoulder.

"_Shouta_," Rin said again, now more clear-headed and insistent. "Not there. I've told you that you don't have to do that."

With a grumble, only half-annoyed in his state, Aizawa straightened himself to meet her gaze. "Why wouldn't I?"

She wrapped one arm tightly around her chest in a coy and delicious attempt to conceal herself. Features crinkling delicately, she shied away. "Because the scars are gross. They're like… I don't know… they look like a disease." Her lips curved into a disgusted bow. "So you don't have to touch them, or look at them, or kiss them just because you–" she cut herself short, and looked down towards her legs. There, along her thighs, Aizawa's fingers trembled in wait. She sighed, and said more quietly, "I don't know how much longer this is going to last, and I just want you to enjoy it while it does."

Aizawa raised his eyebrows at her. "What do you mean by _this_?"

"You know… _this_… us."

_Us_. Incomplete and half-written, rung with the sound of Rin's own soaking uncertainty. Aizawa stared at her – at the exquisite exposure of her body, and the embarrassed way she curved herself away from him – and recognised in her sudden reluctance his own emotional ineptitude. Did that mean she wanted to know what _they _were? Quite as much as he did? Raising his hand to his nape, surprised by the thin coating of sweat that had dewed itself over his own skin, Aizawa sighed.

"Rin." He stepped in closer: close enough that his chest was against hers. Her thighs around his hips, her eyes averted. "My class asked me today if we're seeing each other," he mumbled. "Apparently I've been painfully obvious."

"Obvious?" Rin echoed, looking back to Aizawa sheepishly. "Obvious about what?"

"About – feelings, I suppose. My feelings. For you."

"You have feelings?"

Aizawa grunted, pressed his hand through his hair in a lethargic, dull gesture. "Are you joking?"

She pursed her lips innocently, tapped her finger against the corner of her mouth as it curled into a curiously slanted line of deliberation. "That didn't come out right ~ I meant, like – uh – I don't know–" she chewed on her lip for a moment (and internally, Aizawa moaned at the sight). "What _kind _of feelings?"

Naturally, Aizawa hadn't ever expected that they'd be having this sort of conversation – but now that they were, he realised how he'd hoped it would be straightforward and easy. That he could explain his heart to her without the accompanying disorder and misunderstanding. Of course it was inevitable, but still Aizawa tried to sidestep, to make it all as clean-cut as possible. He cleared his throat, rooted his gaze onto Rin with all the blunt intention he could muster. "Surely you already know."

Her cheeks flushed into a deeper shade of pink – blossomy and cool – and she swallowed against nothing.

Aizawa leaned in to speak, low and hesitant, into her ear. "I'd like you to stay, Rin. Here. With me. On a permanent basis." Silence again. For fuck's sake, why was it so hard to tell the woman his feelings? He pulled away again, looked at her seriously – and under the wide, confused glisten of her eyes, Aizawa's heart plunged at the possibility of some impossible topic. He felt his mouth turn down sourly, his eyes narrow. "Unless you're only interested in the sex."

"No!" Rin choked, and clasped her hands around Aizawa's cheeks. She was shaking. "That's not it at all. It's just, after everything, I didn't think this – that you'd, I mean, we~" she drew a sharp breath, pouted her lips in an absolutely adorable bid to steady herself. "I didn't think this would happen," she said more resolutely.

"Do you not want it to?"

A pause, though she held Aizawa's attention, curving her palms along the line of his jaw. Still, her hands trembled against his flesh, and when at last she spoke it was in a quavering whisper, "I do."

Aizawa clasped her hands in his once more. Whether from the thrill or relief, his lips turned ever so slightly upwards. "Then we're done talking."

And with that, he kissed her again, this time with all the leisurely slowness in the world.


	27. Scars (I)

Chapter 27  
Scars (I)

_He saw no one but heard them all in a yelling, crying, demanding convolution of sound. Faint echo of sirens. Somewhere beneath it all, like a simmering undertone, a laugh – hearty and welcoming: very, very wrong. In the midst of his darkened vision, where before and behind him an oozing blackness extended, Aizawa was overwhelmed by an alarming sense of the familiar. Distant but distinct as early mists reflected upon swampy waters. He squinted into the obscurity and found nothing – only more voices, speaking around him and ever louder, ever more urgent. Trying to reach him? But nothing made sense._

_Move. He took a step and seemed to wade through water. A wet splotching of sound beneath his feet. Like kicking up fallen flowers, the scent of it assaulted Aizawa with a vengeful doggedness: metallic and decaying, slicing against the nose and roiling the stomach. Horrified without fully knowing why, Aizawa looked down to his boots to find them rimmed with crimson. Glowing, poisonous crimson, thick as ink and just as confronting._

_From his footsteps, it seemed to seep deeper into the darkness: a mottled trailing, jagged lines and drippings leading ever further away. Against himself, though the phantom pain in his skull drew him in the other direction of oblivion, Aizawa followed alongside the ominous clues of red._

_They grew distorted and clear again, distorted and clear – until at last they were fashioned into tiny footprints. Almost superstitiously, Aizawa measured his own feet against them, never tearing his eyes away. Not once. For somewhere in his dreaming-reasoning, he knew that if he looked away that would be the end. It was the unspoken rule. The unconscious logic. If he looked away, back into the blackness, back to where the flurry of voices receded into echoing mumbles, it would be a most terrible violation of something implicit and profound. To look away now would be to lose – fracture – break something important, though Aizawa couldn't draw to mind exactly what. _

_Still, with all the mechanical caution of walking over nails, he stepped alongside the crimson lining. The sounds behind him faded into a dull, unified humming, and he was utterly alone. _

_Or not. _

_Before him, at the end of the seeping trail, a little bundle of white. Tiny and balled in a dejected crouch. _

_A sour burn caught in Aizawa's throat as he squinted against the slight glow, the sickly hues of dirt and bruising that marred such whiteness like rot. Drawing closer – ever closer, though Aizawa was quite suddenly overcome with an aching desire to turn away – he saw a petite pair of feet, blackened around the soles and between the toes, as well as ears peeking out from behind an oily curtain of candy-floss hair. Knotted, tangling over tightly tensed limbs in an impossible cascade. _

_And along the flesh of an arm, pink and swollen in a jolting contrast to the childish pallor: a sparse constellation of scars. One here. Another there. Few in number, but heavily loaded enough to make Aizawa's legs crumble beneath him – he knew these scars. _

_The black of his boots, still lined with leaching red, almost touched the impossibly small toes as he crouched down. To stare into a dirty scalp. To watch as the bundled body recoiled from him with a trembling whimper. _

_He knew. _

_And yet, somehow, he couldn't reach out to touch her. Aizawa couldn't bring his body to move as he wanted it to: to take the lost, tiny version of her in his arms. Carry her away from the repugnant darkness and the crimson drippings. He tried to say her name. It wouldn't come out – instead, as though from the backseat, Aizawa heard himself say like she didn't already know, "I'm Eraser Head." He felt it in his voice. Tender, kind. But not his own. _

_She lifted her head, and he was confronted by those eyes. Oh! Those eyes! Their swirling, ghostly greenness just the same. Stellar. Enchanting. However, they were dead and cold like vanishing stars – wholly without the darling shimmer Aizawa knew. He stared into them, into the heavy dullness that plagued them, and watched as the thin, white mouth quivered around the words, "Eraser… Head?"_

"_Yes. What's your name?"_

_But he knew! Why was he asking her this when he already knew? Still, his body rebelled against him, and the words he wanted to say were swallowed into the depths of his throat. A sharp pain, a helplessness as he watched her, a child, shuffle and tremble before him. A clouded bruise around her eye in gemstone purples and blacks. A sick splatter of red across one cheek. She stared, sizing Aizawa up with all the frightened watchfulness of an abandoned kitten, and said absolutely nothing. _

"_Are you hurt?" he asked her – and once again, the voice did not belong to him. It was far-off, with all the hazy transparency of a hologram. Within himself, Aizawa wanted to scream. This was his dream, after all, and yet he spiraled ever more out of control. Unable to move. Unable to speak unless it was dictated for him – as was the case now. He felt himself lean in, felt his heart squeeze as she grimaced – did she remember him? He tried to ask. Did she remember? But what came out was: "It's okay now. You're safe – everything is going to be–"_

"_Where's Yukio-chan?"_

"_Who?"_

"_Yukio-chan," she said, resolute and insistent for all her trembling feebleness. "Tell me where Yukio-chan is."_

_And Aizawa was jolted, enough so that he would have tumbled backwards were it not for his captive position. Despite it all, his features didn't move. His words didn't waver, though he was certain he would pass out at the sound of the syllables that escaped him. "Yukio would be with Doctor Voodoo and the other heroes now. He's alright. You're all alright, so you don't need to be scared." _

_She shook her head. "I'm not scared."_

_And Aizawa felt himself smile. He was horrified. He was sick. But he smiled. "You're a brave little girl." And then, "Why don't you go join the other kids?"_

_Rin paused, and gazed at him with all the intensity of some age-old enchantress. Teeny toes curling beneath themselves. Shoulders rising up into her ears. Aizawa heard her sniff, and then in a chiming, dull voice, she muttered, "I don't like the man with the purple suit." She brought a hand up to her mouth and, with a resemblance so haunting Aizawa wanted to cocoon her into his chest, pulled at her bottom lip. She plucked at it once, twice again. Fidgety and anxious. "He's too loud. Like a dog that won't stop barking. Do you like dogs?" _

_Once again, Aizawa's body moved with a mind of his own. He shook his head, and said, "No. I don't like dogs." He leaned in, spoke more quietly. "And if I'm honest, I don't like the man in the purple suit all that much either." And even if it was true, Aizawa didn't know why he would say it. _

_She frowned thoughtfully, crinkled her nose in delicate folds. "But you're his friend. You came here with him."_

"_I'm not his friend. I'm only working with him for a little bit."_

"_Why?" _

_Why? It resounded between Aizawa's skull, a gong-like echo reverberating through his spine. It was all too real to be a dream, but too strange and convoluted to be anything but. He didn't know what was going on, didn't want to know – he only wanted, in some twisted way, for her to remember him. Even this far-distant, long-gone version of her who shouldn't have seemed so crucially familiar. He was introducing himself to her, speaking like a stranger. Though Aizawa knew that to do otherwise would violate the rules of his world and hers, he couldn't stomach it._

_And yet, he couldn't stop himself either. Couldn't wake up. _

_His shoulders shrugged themselves, and his head tilted under the girl's questioning, cautious gaze. "I'm here to get you out of here. So is Doctor Voodoo and all his guys." _

_Her eyes widened. "Here… for me?"_

"_Yes. For you, and your friend Yukio, and all these other kids too." Aizawa wanted to hurl, an impending darkness beginning to crawl into the corners of his vision. Seeping. Catching up. He wanted to scream, he didn't understand, but he only questioned softly, "So can you tell me your name?"_

_A whisper. "Rin."_

_Rin! Oh, fuck, Rin! "That's pretty," he heard himself say. "And how old are you, Rin?"_

"_I'm nine years old, Eraser Head-san." _

_Nine years old! "Just Eraser Head is fine." _

"Shouta." Out of nowhere.

_A little hand in his. Cool, shaking. "Can I stay with you?" _

"_You have to go to the hospital now. You're all banged up." _

_Pensive, pervasive silence. Enshrouded by a black ghostliness. Aizawa saw her green eyes disappear and reappear again, looking up at him in blurry, concealed desperation. "Can you come with me?"_

"_There's a hero named Paper Cut. He works with Doctor Voodoo and is going to go with you–"_

"_But I want **you** to."_

"Shouta."

"_Sorry. I have to stay here."_

"_**Please**__. I don't want to–" _

"Shouta!"

The darkness disappeared in a blinding burst of hazy yellow light. Aizawa, with the sense that he had just been plunged through chilling waters, flung himself into a sitting position. He panted, overly aware of the scorching ache in his skull as it began to recede to obscure, unknown coordinates down his neck and spine. Slinking away. A foiled predator as it unhinged its jaws and claws from their readied position over Aizawa. Desperately, he grasped at his chest, his hair, his hand, as though expecting to find them vanished from his body.

And then there was a curling of cool fingers in his. A palm over his cheek: soothing remedy. Aizawa lifted his head with an effortful grunt, and was met by Rin's gaze. Brow furrowed. Lips slightly parted. She stared at him through a tired glaze – had she only just woken up? They were in his bed – the bedside lamp on Rin's side was on – she wore the sweater he'd given her.

"Are you okay?" she murmured, tracing her fingers over his forehead. As she did so, Aizawa could feel strands of his hair sticking to his skin in a gross, wet pattern. Like lily roots over a pond. Tenderly, Rin pushed them away. "I've been trying to wake you up for ages... You sounded like you were choking."

"I'm fine," Aizawa said, hearing in his own voice an odd strain. Breathing sent a sharp pain through his chest, and only after several long moments did he muster the coherency to add, "It was just a bad dream."

Rin shuffled closer. Her feet touched his. "What about?"

"It–" he looked up at her, only to be struck by her eyes. Her eyes. That shockingly pale shade of green, their shadowy inscrutability – and with ephemeral haziness, those same eyes began to fade into the back of Aizawa's mind. Young and pleading, bordered by the onyx bruise and the splatter across her cheek. Blood. There'd been blood. And names Aizawa couldn't recall. She'd held his hand, had asked him to stay with her. What had she said? Dogs barking. Someone laughing. Nothing. Aizawa swallowed against the iron fist around his throat, and shrank under Rin's gentle stare.

"What was your dream about?" she prompted once more.

Helplessly, Aizawa leaned backwards onto the pillow. "I don't remember."


	28. Scars (II)

Chapter 28  
Scars (II)

Coffee sat on the bedside table. It sat there for a long time, untouched and quite unwanted.

Though Aizawa was left with nothing but blurs and murmurings, without the faintest ability to recall what about his dream had disturbed him so, all his desire for anything had slipped away. Coffee. Sex. Conversation. None of it. So he and Rin lazed against the pillows, awake and quiet. _02:37 A.M. _She still wore his sweater, nothing underneath it but a pair of underwear, and had her legs drawn up to her chest – head against her knees, fingers tracing deft circles against Aizawa's stomach.

He didn't look at her. Sheer laziness made turning his head to do so seem like much too much effort. However, more than that, a new significance had settled itself over Rin – one which Aizawa somehow couldn't bear to see in all its unknowable and unsettling alterity. He'd thought they were past this: that slowly, albeit _painfully slowly_, Rin was revealing the forbidden parts of herself and that he was being granted special privileges into the labyrinthine twisting of her secrecy and mystery. That he knew her. And yes, Aizawa did know her, perhaps better than most, but it was like knowing art. One could never fully know art. There could only ever be guesses, and incomplete deliberations, and half-true truths.

She was beautiful. She was moving. Aizawa adored her – and for the first time in a long while, he was terrified, plagued by the ominous realization that she was like sand in his hands. The tighter he held her, the better he could feel her grit and texture; he could know every scratch, every crystalline shimmer, and yet – the moment he loosened his grip – she would slip between his fingers into oblivion and he would be left with only an imprint of her in his palms. At any moment, he could lose her. The spell would break, and she would vanish without leaving him even the slightest way of explaining everything she'd meant to him.

It all left an awful aching somewhere inside his ribcage, and Aizawa felt his mouth turn ever downwards at not knowing why. He sighed, twisted his head slightly against the pillow to glimpse Rin's brooding expression – a pout to her lower lip like a child who sucked their thumb too much, staring intently at her finger as it travelled up and down Aizawa's skin.

He held his breath, caught between the loveliness of the lamplight as it burned behind her and the strong pang it sent through his chest, and then touched his own hand to the space between her shoulder blades. Quietly, running his touch down the line of her spine, Aizawa asked her what she was thinking about.

With a soft crooning sound, Rin returned her finger to a point above Aizawa's hipbone. "_This_," she said, drawing a line along his flesh. "I was wondering where you got it."

A scar. One of many. "Why would you want to know that?"

"Just curious ~ I guess."

Aizawa grunted. "A stab wound," he said in turn. "From when I first started out with hero work."

"And this one?" smilingly, Rin moved to circle his elbow where the skin looked mauled and unsightly.

A spider-like discoloration with a certain creeping quality, as though it were moving ever upwards through his veins, it was one of the stranger scars Aizawa had ever seen. Even so though, he was not one to be particularly proud of his scars – stab wounds and villain attacks were par for the course with pro-heroes, after all – and so he had no real interest in recounting the surrounding events in detail. Frankly, he had no real interest in recounting the events at all. But the way Rin watched him for an answer, curious and attentive, continuing to trace circles as though Aizawa's own physical oddities were the most fascinating things in the world – it was disarming.

"Did you ever hear about the USJ incident?" he questioned, considering Rin's features as they blossomed lazily with open interest. "That Shigaraki kid managed to get hold of me – you know, the one with the decay quirk."

Rin turned herself to face Aizawa more fully, twisting the sheets around her legs as she did so. She tilted her head at him, smiling coyly, and touched the scar beneath his eye with a great deal of affection. "Is this one also from USJ?" she asked, and tangled a strand of his hair into her fingers. When Aizawa didn't reply immediately, she stroked his cheek. Seemed to blush. "I saw it on TV when you did one of those press conferences last year…"

"Kind of weird that you'd notice something like that," Aizawa smirked bluntly.

And she smirked right back, charming with her tousled hair and heavy eyes. "You've got a face worth noticing."

"Touché."

Rin touched a new spot on his torso. "What about _this one_?"

For any number of minutes, she continued like this: brushing her fingers over scars and marks, probing Aizawa with tremendous tenderness. Most of the stories weren't all that interesting, yet Rin still listened closely. Nodding, humming, wide-eyed and hanging onto every one of Aizawa's bland, bored words. Certainly, it was this quality of hers that kept him talking: that child-like eagerness to listen and learn, being thoroughly absorbed by the mundane details and his voice.

All the while, his previous uneasiness giving way to a calming captivation, Aizawa slipped his hand beneath the soft fuzz of the sweater Rin wore. He flattened his palm over the bumpy, uneven skin of her ribcage. He watched her intently while he spoke about his own scars, afraid that she'd notice how he touched hers – and when she did, spine going tense and straight, he held the shape of her side with no intention of letting go. Though she inched her torso away, nearly unnoticed in the movement's slightness, Aizawa stroked his fingers up and down over the jagged pattern of her mottled flesh.

"Your turn," he said, Rin's expression greying as he did so. "Tell me where you got these."

Finger to her lip. A tapping scratch. Aizawa's hand lingered over her skin and she sighed, shifting to lean her head over his – curtained by white hair like a veil, lips returning to some past version of their smile. Sheepish. Resigned. "An old boyfriend," Rin conceded quietly, and didn't seem to notice Aizawa's heart do a dramatic leap into his throat. "Although, he wasn't actually a boyfriend. Not really. But he was possessive and particular, and used to burn me with his cigarettes."

"Someone I'd know?" Aizawa questioned, unable to restrain the new dismay in his voice.

Rin shrugged. "That doesn't really matter, does it?"

She was right. "I suppose not."

But as it happened, it mattered a lot to Aizawa. That there'd been another man – or, even less appetizingly, other men – shouldn't have come as such a painful shock; however, in all the inarguable rightness of Rin's place with him and his with her, it took every ounce of Aizawa's self-control to keep his face from flaring into something horrifying. Had these other men been nearly so astounded by Rin as he was? The thought of it was dreadful: her in other men's sweaters, her perfume on their sheets.

But it wasn't simply the fact that there'd been other men, much as knowing so made Aizawa's own possessive streak rear itself. No. The acidic awfulness of it all came more from knowing that there had been other men who'd burned her, who'd harmed and hurt her in some animal attempt at ownership. They'd done this, and now it was Rin's tendency to flinch away – even in the most miniscule of ways – whenever Aizawa tried to touch those raw, vulnerable parts of her.

Sitting up straight, eye-to-eye with Rin, Aizawa withdrew his hand from her ribcage. Suddenly self-conscious and – ashamed?

"I'd never hurt you," he proclaimed.

In a stunning contrast to his solemnity though, Rin looked almost amused. "Why so sentimental all of a sudden?" she asked, voice a soothing chime.

"I'm being serious," Aizawa said and narrowed his eyes, not so much at Rin as at the freshly enduring image of the sort of rabid primate that would dare to lay a finger on her – on _her_! He curved his fingers into her neck as one would around smooth ivory, and pressed his lips against hers in a quiet, apprehensive kiss. More for himself than anything else. The feeling real and solid –and reminding Aizawa once again of her evanescent peculiarity. How easy it would be for her to slip away at any moment! To disappear like dew from leaves, like autumn mist from the horizon.

With a falling groan, Aizawa drew away to bury his face into Rin's neck. Lithe as tulip stems, her arms draped themselves around his shoulders and he felt her mouth breeze across his temple.

"I'd never _ever_ do anything to hurt you," Aizawa said again.

She sighed. "Yes, I know."

"Ever."

"I know."

A murky sadness had crept itself into her voice, a melancholy quite suited to the hour's dimness. Aizawa relayed it in his mind, picking out the nuances like tiny stones from a river bed. She was tired, he was too, and to bow back into the bed with her arms around him – his head leaned into the silken cushioning of her chest – was a lingering promise. Just moments ago they'd had all the time in the world to do so, their intermingled silences perfect and fragile. Now, however, the opportunity retreated rapidly from them. Rin's body went rigid as though she'd been shot. She drew her arms back into herself, clutching at the sleeves of Aizawa's sweater while he himself turned to stare out the bedroom door into the darkness beyond it.

It hadn't been the joint trickery of their imaginations. They'd heard it, muffled and uncertain at first, now more insistent – a knocking at the front door.

One knock, punctuated by a long pause. Another. Then a violent tirade of knocking, knocking, knocking. With it, a voice much too shrill and excitable for the sacred loneliness of the hour. A voice which set Aizawa's teeth on edge with both rage and disgust: "Rin-chan! Are you in there!? Let me in! Rin-chan, Rin-chan, _Rin-chan_!"

"_Fuck_," Rin spat in a whisper, and leaped from the bed in a desperate search of the clothes along the floor.

Aizawa stood too, the chill of the room colliding with his skin in a jolting harshness. He couldn't find his underwear, was too late in realising that Rin had grabbed his pink sweatpants before he could, and by the time he'd managed to pull others from the cupboard to cover himself, she was already through the bedroom door.

"Rin – _wait_," he hissed at her receding form. "I should get–"

"No." Pouncing back into the bedroom, she stared at him, almost horrified as the knocking continued. "_Please_. You need to stay in here."

"I'm not doing that."

"You have to." Grasping Aizawa's face, bundling his cheeks between her hands with a sharp desperation, Rin kissed him again. Not long but with frightening intensity, so that his limbs fell into a frozen uncertainty at her sides – and when she pulled away, leaving Aizawa's mouth wet and heavy under the weight of her absence, she gazed at him in a silent plead. Face blanched to an otherworldly shade of white. Teeth digging into her bottom lip.

Then she was gone from him once more, this time shutting the bedroom door in a wordless ban and leaving Aizawa to listen, not quite helplessly but something like it, through the flimsy wood. Indeed, much like an eavesdropping child, he pressed his ear to it. Waited with bated breath as the knocking, knocking, _knocking _continued in an incessant and rhythmless demand. He couldn't hear Rin's footsteps but heard the shrill jingle and scratch of the front door keys in the lock. And then the door clicking open, and then–

"_RIN-CHAN~!" _

That _thing_.

Gritting his teeth, Aizawa imagined the freakish little girl-boy-man in his apartment. Arms around Rin in a snake-ish curling, holding fast to her like an urchin or weed. Possessive and childish, sending an unpleasant ire through the marrow of Aizawa's bones. Despicable, sneaking by to find her at this forsaken hour. What did it want? _What did it want? _

From the living area: Rin's voice, too soft for Aizawa to hear, too gentle for what was deserved.

The man-child, Yukio, followed with a vomited succession of noisy babblings, shrill as nails on a chalkboard and menacing in all the saccharine innocence of his words. "I knew I'd find you!" he cried. "I _knew _it ~ now you can come back, and everything will be fine again. Oh! _Oh_! Kizashi is going to be _so _happy, Rin-chan! _So happy_! He's missed you, and I've missed you, and Doctor Voodoo too! But wait–" A pause, in which a vile surge of emotion welled through Aizawa's limbs. He didn't wait long, but the silence seemed to continue on into eternity until at last Yukio questioned, "Rin-chan, why do you smell so weird?"


	29. Come Back Rin-Chan

Chapter 29  
Come Back, Rin-Chan

Despite hating every second, Aizawa did nothing to intrude. He listened to the way Rin spoke in a lulling coo, the smile in her voice palpable and alarming against Yukio's displeasure – _You're wearing an ugly jersey and even uglier pants. I don't like them, Rin-chan. I don't like them at all _– and though Rin didn't seem to be bothered by the rising squeal in the man-child's voice, offering quiet words of reassurance and suggestion as a means of distraction, Aizawa's insides grew ever more twisted the more time passed. Something was wrong. He could hear it in the rapid tumble of Yukio's words, the excitable hiss behind every syllable like a predator suddenly and inexplicably on its guard. Picking out threats. Brandishing their teeth.

Even so, Rin made valiant attempts to calm Yukio's nerves. She offered him something to eat, tried to make him sit down, hummed and shushed him at all intervals – but to no avail. Aizawa couldn't banish the image of Rin holding Yukio to her chest, snuggling him and stroking that rabid little face like a doting older sister. More than that was the ominous inkling that at any moment Yukio would snap and bite and claw, his speech becoming more muddled and muddy the more he pointed out the oddities of the situation: the unfamiliarity of the apartment, the strangeness of there being two coffee cups on the table, the hickey in Rin's neck.

Well. Fuck.

Aizawa hadn't known he'd done that.

And for the first time since Yukio's arrival, Rin's calm seemed to waver as she gently spluttered, "Oh. That. It's – don't worry about it, Yukio-kun. It's nothing." Even through the wood of the door, Aizawa could hear her slithering anxiety: greater than simple embarrassment, a thrown undertone that rocked her words and did nothing to quell the rising burn in Aizawa's gut.

"Rin-chan," Yukio said, suddenly somber and not so sickeningly sweet in his sugary monotone. "Kizashi's going to be _so_ upset if he sees–"

"He won't find out about this though," Rin was quick to say, and the returning certainty of her words surprised Aizawa. "You won't tell him, will you Yukio-kun? Remember, you promised never to tell anyone anything if I asked you not to."

"But Kizashi said–"

"You know what I think?" In the adoption of such a cool, honeyed tone there was something sinister Aizawa couldn't place. New and surprising, an enigmatic magic like the voice of a sphinx or succubus. He heard a shuffling on the other side of the door, quieter whisperings that he strained to hear. There came Rin's voice again, low and motherly: "I think you should tell me where Kizashi and Doctor Voodoo are so I can go see them myself. What do you think, Yukio-kun? Don't you think that would be nice? We'd all be together and we could talk everything over – you'd like that, wouldn't you, Yukio?"

A silence. Aizawa had been holding his breath, and now his head began to spin. So Doctor Voodoo _was_ alive? Rin wasn't the least bit hesitant in suggesting it. Yukio did nothing to deny it. Now too, there was this Kizashi who came up time and time again, the name glaring and harsh and setting off a shrill flare in the walls of Aizawa's skull. So familiar; he'd heard the name before, he was certain, yet still he couldn't place it. More murmurings, obscure and childish like girls at a sleepover playing truth or dare. Rin, lulling and hypnotic. Yukio, voice lowering and lowering as though he were falling asleep.

But then the soprano of displeasure reared itself once more, this time more desperate and grating. "But Doctor Voodoo told me _not to tell _– I wasn't supposed to tell you, Rin-chan! _I wasn't_~" Louder still. "Everybody's keeping secrets. Everybody wants me to keep their secrets and it's not nice!"

"I know it's not nice. It's not fair on you," Rin said softly, genuine and sad, though somehow still with that collected psychologist-monotone so strange and unsettling. "But you need to give me Doctor Voodoo's location, Yukio. It's very impor– Oww!"

Aizawa's spine tensed.

And there was a thud, followed by Yukio's pleading hiss – a manic slur, a violent stew of words. "You can come back, Rin-chan! Kizashi won't be mad ~ p_lease _come back!"

"Yukio, let go," Rin sounded choked, restrained somehow. "You're hurting me."

But Yukio ignored her, "Doctor Voodoo speaks about _you all the time _and it makes me miss you _so much_ ~ he didn't mean it when he said he'd kill you. He didn't, he didn't! He promised he didn't mean it! If you come back it'll all be–"

Aizawa flung the bedroom door open, organs seeming to collapse upon themselves. He wasn't wearing a shirt but felt heavy and constricted, sweat beading itself in an oppressive sheet across his neck. He said Rin wouldn't be going anywhere. The words rose from his throat in a phantom insistence not entirely his own – and though he saw it all immediately, none of it quite registered in his mind as real. The lights weren't on, the moth white glow of the moon falling in from the window as the only source of illumination. Rin and Yukio were on the couch, almost grotesquely twisted up in an intimate mix of limbs. Yukio gripped one of Rin's wrists in both hands. Rin's free arm was around Yukio's back in a confused combination of a hug and a resisting pull. Both of them stared at Aizawa. Frozen and stiff. The ominous moonlight casting shadows across their features: both of them angled and somehow mythical; both of them odd and wrong.

Aizawa reached for the light switch. The room lit up.

And in the new clarity, Aizawa looked at Rin first. Her face: white and twisted in horror or pain, an unwritten warning carved into her fairy-features – only just too late. Yukio had sprung from her arms and almost looked to be writhing before her. His gaze was piercing, a poisonous knifing of hatred and dismay that sent a vile sting through Aizawa's throat. Though he recognised the jagged mosaic of teeth and the malnourished tremble about Yukio's knobbly limbs, there was something freshly awful about him. Something tragic like a wounded hyena scaling the bars of its cage.

The pink cloud of hair was pointed in all directions, soft and flimsy. Even more like candy floss than Rin's. In a mess of clothing – backwards sweater like a straightjacket, stripy stockings of pink and white, the tiniest and girliest military boots Aizawa had ever seen – Yukio was odd, to say the least. But across his face, in a gruesome contrast to the pastels of his outfit, were blacks fading to purples fading to blues like ink stains. Yukio glared through eyes swollen close to shut, the surrounding skin lumpy and dark in a charcoal-coloured swelling. There was a cut across his cheek, blood dried and flaky, and a clump of hair seemed to be missing from the front of his head where a rash-redness screamed over the skin.

There were bruises in his neck as well. Curling handprints, dark and demonic.

"_You_." Maniacally quaking, Yukio jabbed a finger at Aizawa. "What are you ~ I don't understand~" He turned to look at Rin, who now stood and stared with terror at Aizawa. "Why is _he _here, Rin-chan? I thought ~ it's Eraser Head. Yes, yes. But you said when you asked me–"

"This is my apartment," Aizawa stated, harsh in his bluntness.

The wrong thing to say.

Rin grew stiffer. The tendons of her neck tensed like violin strings – and there, in the curving crook near her collarbone, was the hickey.

Yukio's battered features did a devilish contortion. "Apartment. Your apartment," the snake-like hiss returned. Yukio slinked around, slowly and with a painful twist to his spine. He and Rin watched each other for a long time. "That's why you smell weird," Yukio murmured eventually. "You smell like him, Rin-chan."

"Yukio," Rin raised her hands up before her, soft and guarded, the ashy shock still clear across her face though she swallowed it from her voice. "Let me explain…"

"Are you fucking him?"

So childlike, the concept was jolting off Yukio's tongue. A new desperation welled itself in Aizawa – to get to Rin, to do something. He could have done something. Very easily, as a matter of fact. However, Rin's gaze held him in place, warned him off. Yukio continued to seethe between them, an angry serpent, a bomb ticking away.

And then exploding.

"You are!" Yukio shrieked, and Rin lunged to grab him. He winced away, just too slow. Rin cocooned her arms around his diminutive frame, pulled his face into her shoulder and held him there. More restraint than embrace, unyielding as Yukio thrashed and screamed – _You are! After all this time! He's taking you away even after all this time! No! You said you didn't want ~ that he wouldn't ~ he's not supposed to remember! No! No! _Little fists hammered against Rin's back with a sick, hollow sound. She didn't flinch. Instead, she began to rock back and forth. Pressing her lips against Yukio's ears, whispering her sweet nothings like an enchantress. Rocking. Lulling. The hellish pitch of Yukio's accusations dying down to sobs.

All the while, Aizawa remained rooted between the bedroom and the scene, one half of him bemused and the other half horrorstruck as throbs of pain began to pulse through his neck. Dull echoes of the flare to come. Gripping at the back of his brain in a clawed, insistent fisting each time Yukio made a sound. The aching slinked up and down Aizawa's spine, stalking, and he didn't move for fear of provoking its animal hunger. Already, its teeth were set over his skull – in fact, so overcome by the threat of it, Aizawa didn't fully comprehend the slicing glare through which Yukio watched him. Head curved against Rin's chest, eyes dead-set. Pressing his palm to the base of his skull, isolating the pain's slightness beneath his touch, Aizawa narrowed his eyes at the girl-boy-man.

Yukio sat up from Rin's grip. She gazed at him, expression indecipherable, and he stared at Aizawa. Rotten berries again, like blood in Aizawa's nose. It shot across the entirety of Aizawa's body with bloodthirsty vehemence, made him crumple. Blinding in its purity. Ripping open something deep and crucial. And then it was gone.

Aizawa was on his knees. Rin's voice bounced around between his ears: his name and a heartbreaking terror.

And then, with a feline swiftness both awe-inspiring and alarming, Yukio thrust himself from Rin's arms and was sprinting for the door.

* * *

**A/N: So shit's getting interesting. What do you all think is going to happen next? Follow, favourite and review to let me know your thoughts. ;) xxx**


	30. Secret Somethings

Chapter 30  
Secret Somethings

Yukio vanished through the door in a predator-swift ghosting, and Rin was halfway to going after him. On her toes. Aizawa's sweatpants flapping around her feet in a clumsy stew of pink material. She was fast – almost too fast, and had Aizawa not lunged out _at that very moment_ he would have missed her and she would have been gone into the darkness. A faint echo of Yukio's words lingered in Aizawa's ears. They mixed into Rin's with a phantom obscurity, punctuated by Aizawa's heavy pulse as it throbbed – throbbing, throbbing, throbbing – through his chest and skull. He held onto Rin, perhaps rather too roughly, not yet fully aware of the way she struggled against him. Pushing his shoulders. Clawing at his hand around her wrist.

Some vague semblance of pain, not quite real as it quivered through Aizawa's limbs.

Gnawing.

Pulling away at unseen seams.

"I told you not to come out," Rin said, still struggling to tug herself free from his grasp. Her fingers were trembling, and Aizawa could feel through his palm how her own heartbeat lashed through her veins: demonically fast and uneven, spiking in awful stabs. "Why didn't you listen? Yukio was going to – he was going tell me–"

"If I call the police now, they'll probably catch him. _Then _he can tell you whatever the hell he wants." To be fair, Aizawa didn't think before he spoke, and his heart plunged at the poison of Rin's glare. Shimmering green, dewy and red-rimmed in an attempt to blink back the tears that threatened to fall. Still, Aizawa held her fast, pulling her deeper against him. To cocoon her more fully, he let go of her wrist and grew sick at the sight of snaking red marks – Chinese burns in their most callous glory, childish and threatening. "Did he do this?"

"He was scared." Rin didn't look at Aizawa, but the anger in her voice was palpable. "You scared him."

"Good. I should hope so. And I'll do more than scare him if he decides to come back."

"He won't. Not now – and that's fucked up because Yukio was my _best _chance at finding Doctor Voodoo." She thrust herself out from Aizawa's arms, looking like a child on the brink of a temper tantrum. White lips. Teary eyes. Bristling beneath Aizawa's clothes in a thwarted rage.

Aizawa pushed his hands into his pants' pockets, meeting her stare head-on with his own steely coolness. "So Doctor Voodoo _is _alive then."

"As I said."

"Rin," he spoke her name softly, feeling guilty in the face of her temper but also unable to relent. "The police need to know about this."

A determined sniff. Rin just about smacked her hands against her eyes in a bid to rid herself of the tears. "The police won't do anything. They can't do anything and you can't tell them." Her lips trembled. Aizawa pressed his hands to her cheeks and was shocked to find her skin in a burning fever despite its icy whiteness. At the touch, Rin narrowed her eyes. "_Please_."

"Tell me why first."

Nothing but silence, Rin's mouth falling into a hard-set line. They stared at each other for a long time: she doing the same thing she always did – burying her voice, hiding things and herself – while Aizawa waited for an answer that wouldn't come. In spite of himself, he bent forward to kiss the hickey in her neck and she didn't flinch as he did so, only inhaling harshly. Holding her breath. Making Aizawa pull her closer until her face was in his shoulder and his was buried in her hair, where he insisted again that she tell me him _why_. Why, for heaven's sake, did she run in circle after circle of saying things halfway and choking back the words that so badly needed to come out?

He stroked her hair almost absent-mindedly, not so aware of its softness and smell as he usually was. She was perfectly still in his arms, as though having fallen asleep – and somehow, the frustrated and frustrating stillness of the moment reminded Aizawa very much of how it had been after Shirakumo died.

How his parents had shouted and cried in a bid to get him to talk about what had happened, as if talking would actually help, and how he in turn had refused. Not out of any sense of hard-headedness, though certainly it may have come across as such. Not by any desire to be difficult, but rather because it was just too much to put into words: the guilt and, in some inexplicable way, the fear of replaying that day over. Was it the same now?

Still without a sound, Rin twisted away and made for the kitchen. Closing the front door as she went past it. Looking unsteady on her feet as she walked in a restless, dashing tip-toe. Not entirely there. Aizawa followed her in an equally unsettled silence, saying nothing about the way she took the wine from the kitchen counter even though it was just past three in the morning. He watched her throw aside the cork and sink to the floor, drinking straight from the bottle in a melancholy desperation. She pulled a face. She looked up at him and started to cry.

"It wasn't supposed to go like this," she murmured through streaming, silvery tears. "I was supposed to find him ~ Doctor Voodoo. And you ~ you weren't supposed to get involved."

Despite the ache that drove itself through him, Aizawa didn't move from the kitchen doorway. In the mismatched mess of his clothes, and swallowing down several sharp gulps of red wine, and looking deathly pale in the kitchen's morning darkness, another layer to Rin began to peel itself away. She resisted it – so much was clear in the way she bundled herself into a defensive curl in the corner of the cupboards, and how she held the wine bottle to her lips like a silencing pacifier. Still, it wasn't quite enough, and in her stuttering breaths parts of her began to bleed out into an alarming, exquisite vulnerability.

Aizawa brushed away the hair from his eyes, ignoring the chill as it seeped against his naked torso. He sighed as Rin took another sip of the wine and, at last, stepped across the kitchen tiles to take the bottle from her. The faintest pull of defiance held it back, but without much more than that Rin soon let go and clutched her legs to her chest, head burying itself into her knees. Grunting slightly, limbs stiff and cold, Aizawa crouched down to sit before her.

He pressed his hand to her bicep, bleak over how she flinched from his touch like a frightened animal or child. "Stop hiding things," he said – as close to pleading as he would ever come. "It's not logical. You said Yukio was scared, but you're scared too – and you can't keep trying to face it alone."

Chime-like through the silence, Rin's voice was a quiet whimper, "I have to."

"No. You don't." He pried open her arms, averting his eyes from the lingering redness over her wrist, and took her hands in his. Kissed her knuckles. Was met with a searing, layered gaze of green and resignation. "Tell me everything, Rin. _Everything_."

The tears hadn't stopped – however, it now seemed more mechanical how they rolled out from her eyes. There was no longer any feeling to them, no labored sadness as Rin wiped them away with the sleeves of Aizawa's sweater. Her fingers tightened around his, an instinctive motion, and she drew another coarse breath. Pushing and pulling against herself, the pain of it palpable in her quivering pulse. She stared, the same emptying greyness about her features as there'd been at the police station all those weeks ago, and told Aizawa. She told him with all the profound intensity granted by the horror of the fact: "The Voodoo Agency has been trafficking children."

"What?"

"Children," Rin repeated.

Hiding in plain sight. And really, there was no way for Aizawa to have seen it coming. No way for him to look back and pick out clues and hints and tell-tale signs – for indeed, he tried. He tried hard. In that moment, he thought of every instance he'd ever seen or heard of Doctor Voodoo, everything he knew about the Voodoo Agency: the talent for obscurity, the inaccessible exclusivity, like vampires cloaking through the night. All of it suspicious, indeed, but never enough to suspect – _this_.

Rin cleared her throat. Stretching deftly upwards, she grasped the wine bottle once again with reptilian ease and brought it back down from the counter. A large gulp, smoother than before. "I've been trying to stop it – for just over a year now. I don't really know how I'm supposed to do it though," she said, and the sturdy flatness of her voice jolted Aizawa back to her.

"You can't stop it on your own," he said, eliciting a defeated stare.

"I couldn't go to anyone else."

"But why?"

"Because I don't think I was the first person who figured everything out. There were one or two people at the agency before me who just… disappeared." She clicked her fingers, reminiscent of that first car ride back from the hospital. _The agency has been dissolved – click – just like that_. Just like that. "And the police weren't an option. I didn't have enough evidence – or I mean, I don't anymore. Everything I had was taken that day at my apartment..." Another sip, more conservative. "But a lot of evidence would have been quashed in the blink of an eye anyway. Doctor Voodoo ~ he's got powerful friends. Politicians. Certain religious sects. All sorts of organisations. He could pull any sort of strings. Frankly, I'm surprised I'm not dead with the type of stunts he could pull."

"So the other three from the Voodoo Agency who were killed–"

"They also knew something was wrong, and they wanted to help me." Rin tapped her finger against the rim of the bottle, looking down to her feet. When she spoke again it was heartfelt and miserable, though with something of an irritated undertone. Fleeting and muted. "Four days later, they were dead." She slid the bottle towards Aizawa, a not-so-subtle hint.

And he took it. Not drinking just yet, but holding it to himself with all the intention of doing so. "How did he do it? Doctor Voodoo, I mean."

She bit her lip. "It's – umm – I don't think I've got the whole thing right yet but ~ I mean, it's a whole process."

Aizawa hummed, wordlessly pressing her to continue despite the fact that she almost looked to be in pain.

Swallowing hard against nothing, her neck suddenly too weak to hold up her head, Rin shrank into herself and looked away from Aizawa. "It was always the kids no one wanted – you know, street kids. Often times having run away from home. But always with good quirks. _Always_." She slid the tip of her finger between her lips, biting down lightly and so muffling her words. "He'd kidnap them ~ no, sorry, someone else would do that – but then the Voodoo Agency would do a big, farcical rescue. And there were these orphanages – special types, where the kids would go for a few weeks, and then they'd just kind of… I don't know… It's like they're erased from existence. No paper trails. Nothing. No one ever sees them again and no one cares."

"Fucking hell," Aizawa muttered, throwing back a large gulp of the wine even though his stomach churned. Even though the burn in his throat was already enough to sear away at his insides. The vinegar acidity of the alcohol webbed itself against his organs, and he pressed his thumb and index fingers to his eyes. _Fucking hell_.

Rin shifted, coming closer to Aizawa. "You know, All for One was one of Doctor Voodoo's biggest clients," she said secretively, almost apologetic. There was a hitch in her breathing. Her fingers shook as she lifted them to brush her hair behind her ear, to pluck at her lip. "You probably don't want to hear this, but I think – I'm not sure, or at least, I don't want to believe it – but I think Doctor Voodoo provided a lot of the quirks for the Nomus."

Now it was Aizawa who said nothing. He shut his eyes against it all: the sheer disgust as it swished between his gut and lungs; images of the Nomus' deformed bodies and manic, tortured eyes; Rin's emotions, full-bodied and flaring across her face in such an inexplicable bouquet of immensity that she suddenly seemed exhausted and empty. Aizawa drank again, wholly unaware of the taste of the wine down his throat – and then he felt Rin's arms curl themselves around his shoulders. He opened his eyes. She was on her knees, leaning into him so as to hide her face against his neck.

She muttered his name, voice weaker than a little girl's. "I didn't know – I swear. I swear I didn't know…"

"I'd never think you did," Aizawa said quietly.

The longer she held onto him, the more she trembled, the fierceness of it reverberating through the material of Aizawa's clothes on her body. His neck felt dewy with her tears spreading over his skin. Her hands were clawed against his back and he just – fuck, he didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to do other than to dangle his own arms around her helplessly, to pull her into his lap and sit there on the kitchen floor with his head leaned against hers, with his hands travelling up and down the tense line of her back in a futile attempt at comfort.

Was comfort even appropriate at this point? Shouldn't he have been angrier? Not with her but with… everything else?

They needed stronger alcohol.

They needed cigarettes – Aizawa hadn't smoked in a long time, but he could have used it right then.

"Shouta."

"Mmm?"

"I could have been involved." Rin sat up, somehow managing to look both somber and absolutely terrified. "I might not remember–"

"Don't be ridiculous," Aizawa interrupted her, the tone of it more irate than he'd intended or felt. He held her cheeks again, fixing her attention on him. "If you had done anything, you'd remember. There's no way anyone in their right mind or otherwise would forget."

Her features contorted into a terrible mask, as though she'd been stabbed or poisoned. "Yes, there is. Yukio. Yukio can–" she choked on a welling sob, the sound of the breath she drew painful and confronting. Aizawa stared at her, his own vile mix of emotion sending a series of goring chills down his spine. Something more than that too. Something in the mention of Yukio's name that made Aizawa sick – not with any of the earlier rage or derision, but with a creeping anticipation much more awful. Rin shuddered, and bit her lip too hard, and then said with all the difficulty in the word, "Yukio can erase people's memories."

* * *

**A/N: Dun, dun, duuuunn...! :O**


	31. Aizawa-Sensei

**A/N: GUYS. I just want to remind everyone reading that I appreciate you! That is all. Enjoy the chapter. xxx**

Chapter 31  
Aizawa-Sensei

_Somehow, he knew where he was. The imagined smells, the distinctive blur of footsteps and chatter somewhere down the hallway – Aizawa knew, though it all faded and wavered in a haunted reflection of reality. He stared, dream-lit light pouring through the windows in foggy white, and he was confronted by the dim sense of being underwater: everything obscure and iridescent, undulating in a curious pattern of hazy smoothness and shimmers like crystal. Doors against the walls. At the end of the hallway, one was open and haloed in a peculiar glow. _

_Enthralled by its strangeness, the familiarity of the scene both stirring and ominous, Aizawa slid his feet across the floor. The tiles chilled his soles. A breeze was against his back – with a vague dismay, Aizawa winced to discover he was half-naked. Barefoot, clad only in the old sweatpants he'd slept in. Goosebumps rose along his limbs, harsh in their doggedness, and he pressed onwards down the corridor. A dream. This was simply a dream; he needn't let his exposed flesh unsettle him; there was no need for him to hold his breath nor for him to cringe against the echo of voices as they travelled along the walls. _

_More footsteps: a repetitive overtone to the distant noises. Light and slow, steady as the sound of dripping rain as they grew unnaturally louder, ever closer. Aizawa knew them – toe-first, ethereally graceful. He froze, his breath catching in his chest like a hook to his heart, and he stared out helplessly down the corridor. Past the open door. The voices died away, as though having dissolved, and it was only the tap, tap, tap of the footsteps meeting the riotous pulse in Aizawa's ears. Down the corridor. Past the open door. Until from around the corner, she appeared. _

_Her. _

_Or a distant version of her – third year, long limbs like tulip stems, that day-dreamy reserve cloudy upon her features. Somehow more beautiful than Aizawa dared to remember. Her fingers were at the corner of her mouth, gently fidgeting as she wandered down the corridor, and beneath her blazer Aizawa spotted bandages around her wrist. Charmed by the quaintness of it, thrown by such delicate youthfulness, he tried to say her name. Indeed, he heard the syllable fall from his tongue in a melancholy clash of tenderness and confused dejection, and he lifted a hand as though to touch her. But she didn't hear him. Didn't even seem to see him, though now he stood right before her. _

_She paused outside the open door and Aizawa's body went stiff under the heart-wrenching familiarity of this younger Rin. Surely she hadn't always been this lovely – so soft and quiet; odd in her spooky paleness, enigmatic in her distant stare. Surely he would have noticed it all those years ago – no. Aizawa shook himself. His mind was a derivative author, feeding from and muddying reality. This wasn't her. Only a sweetened distortion, an unimaginative dream-work. _

_Almost pained, Aizawa tore his gaze away, eyes flitting to his naked feet, to the uncovered flesh of his stomach. _

_He heard a knocking, followed by her voice: sweet, uncertain, exactly the same. _

"_Aizawa-sensei?" _

_And then shockingly, Aizawa heard himself. Some other version of him speaking from the other side of the door. He told Rin to come in. He called her Hiruma. And as Rin tiptoed through the doorway, looking flustered with the slightest redness over her pallor, she pulled at her blazer's sleeves in an attempt to better cover the bandages around her wrists. _

_Aizawa swallowed hard against nothing, rooted in place as a thousand small explosions went off across his bones. Within himself, he could feel his body pulling in all directions as though he were paper to be ripped – perhaps slightly more than one half of him urging him to follow Rin into the mystery of the doorway, the other parts pleading that he wake up. Though there was nothing immediately wrong, an alarming unease beat itself into Aizawa's gut. Something like the butterflies, only much more insistent in their violence. _

_From the door, he turned away, reasoning that perhaps if he left now he'd leave the dream behind. That he'd wake up. _

_Only – what if he didn't?_

_He turned back and followed Rin. Through a resolved clarity of mind, Aizawa found himself in his old classroom: the same as those few years ago, the rows of desks and the paint on the walls perfectly untouched, though it was all rather more haunting in the glazed abstraction of the scene. The blackboard. The desk, with Rin having seated herself on one side of it – stiff with her hands restless in her lap, so exquisitely unsure of herself Aizawa wanted to grab her cheeks and kiss her forehead. Opposite her was him. The other him. _

_It wasn't often that Aizawa saw his reflection – and never before had he been so shaken by it as he was now. The other him. Hunched over in the yellow sleeping bag, staring across the desk at Rin with unyielding hardness. A dream, Aizawa reminded himself. This. Was. Only. A. Dream. _

"_Are you feeling better?" the other him questioned. "You lost an unnecessary amount of blood in your exam." _

_Aizawa noticed Rin's hands subtly tug at the edge of her sleeves once again. "I'm – uh – I'm a lot better now. Thank you, Aizawa-sensei." She paused, sucked on her bottom lip in a way gorgeously reminiscent of the older her, the real Rin. "The nurse said you came to the hospital."_

"_I did. To check in," though the other-him said this blankly, Aizawa could hear in his voice a creeping hesitation, as though well-aware of the fact that he could have simply called the hospital to 'check in', that actually going to see Rin was unnecessary and almost overkill. _

_Staring between her and this dreamed reflection of himself, Aizawa struggled to understand the conversation. Or, rather, he struggled to grasp the softening in it: other-him leaned against the desk and towards Rin, the glaze over his features murky and gentle. Strange, because it was a look like the shimmer of raindrops on wet leaves. Confronting, because Aizawa didn't think he'd ever looked at Rin like that until now. Other-him spoke flatly once again – however, it was with an odd new quietness, "Will you be alright for the graduation ceremony?" _

_A sheepish smile across Rin's lips. It was awkward and ill-suited to the sylphish angularity of her features, though somehow still charming. "As long as I don't have to cartwheel across the school stage, I should be fine," she said quietly. _

_And sweet Lord above, did it cut through Aizawa in any multitude of ways. Rin wasn't particularly funny. She didn't try to be – but this innocent attempt at wit, almost clumsy in its sweetness, did manage to send Aizawa's heart into his throat as well as bring a half-smirk to other-him's face. _

"_Pity. That would have been something to see," other-him said, and then, "Is there something specific you wanted to talk to me about?" _

"_Oh, right ~ I – umm – you see, I wanted to ask your advice on something…" Rin's features flushed again. Her finger went up to her lip. "It's something that's kind of been bothering me for a while now, actually. But Doctor Voodoo's offered me a job." She plucked at her bottom lip once. "For after my graduation."_

"_That's good," other-him said._

_And Aizawa suddenly couldn't bear to look at himself, appalled. _

_Something of a thoughtful hum echoed out from Rin's chest. "I guess. Principal Nezu seems really eager for me to take it. He even told me it's kind of like an honour since, you know, hardly anyone ever gets hired by the Voodoo Agency. But… I don't know…" _

"_But?" _

"_Sorry, I'm just not really sure how to explain, sensei. I – my work study at his agency has been really good and I've learned a lot, but I just get this…" Rin seemed to sink into herself, perhaps wanting to disappear into the chair, and Aizawa couldn't shake the desire to stop her. Indeed, he did try. He tried to say something, anything, to tell her and himself everything they couldn't know now – but he found himself rooted to his place, paralysed and speechless as Rin continued, "I get this feeling ~ you'll probably say it isn't rational, and I know it isn't, but it's like a pain through my stomach whenever I think about it." _

_Other-him stared at her, pushing back the hood of his sleeping bag as though trying to get a better view. "Where does my advice come in?" _

"_Umm, you see, I wanted to know if – I mean, if you think I should –" Rin's words began to fall out in a greater convolution. The more she fumbled, the more worked up she got until the things she said were rung with a desperate and ambiguous frustration. "Do you think I should take the job? Because Doctor Voodoo – he does the kind of work I want to do and he's paid a lot of attention to helping me figure things out – for becoming a hero and everything. But there's just… I've been…" Breathlessness. Aizawa's insides churned as he watched from his unseen corner how Rin's skin greyed to an unhealthy colour. She scratched and fidgeted. She began to mumble a rapid succession of nonsense. _

_Other-him unzipped the sleeping bag in its entirety, discarding it and moving to the other side of the desk. He bent down next to Rin, looking at her though she didn't look at him. He told her to breathe. That there was no need for her to panic – she was okay, she was fine. There was no need to panic. But oh, was there a need to panic. Aizawa panicked at his own helplessness, torn between waking up (somehow) and getting to her. Stopping everything in its tracks even though what was done was done and the outcomes were inevitable._

_But this was a dream. It was only a dream._

_Rin inhaled harshly, the sound of it painful and sharp. "Sorry. I'm sorry~" She shook her head, and made to stand. "This isn't a big deal. I'm sorry to have bothered you, sensei."_

_But other-him touched her shoulder, pulling away just as quickly and managing to keep Rin in place. "Say what you wanted to say." _

_For a long time, they stared at each other and Aizawa couldn't help but feel like an intruder upon a very private affair – absurdly so, since he was looking at himself and this was, after all, his dream. Still, he couldn't shake the urge to tear away his eyes, as though secrets were being exchanged to which he wasn't and couldn't be privy. Watching their real selves have sex would probably have felt less invasive. It would probably have been a lot more pleasant too; wouldn't have left Aizawa with a burning between his lungs and a violent need to shake himself. He couldn't move though. Couldn't shut his eyes nor close his ears._

_Porcelain features contorting, Rin said at last, "I've been having nightmares, Aizawa-sensei." She shuffled in her seat, not flinching away from other-Aizawa but rather seeming to lean into him. Slow, hesitant, but distinctly so. "I've been having them for a long time, but they've gotten a lot worse since I met Doctor Voodoo." _

'_What kind of nightmares?"_

"_About~" she trailed off, and paused for thought. Aizawa watched her. Other-him watched her, waiting at her side with an unreadable expression. A weird noise escaped Rin's throat as she continued, "About my veins falling out. And people using them as, like, kind of like strings. For tying me up. Or moving me around like a puppet. I don't know, sensei. They're always different." Grasping at her wrist. Rubbing it anxiously. "But I always see faces," she muttered. "They snarl at me and lick up my blood. Like vampires. Or dogs."_

_Silence for a moment. Dogs. The phantom echo of dogs barking at the back of Aizawa's mind. He felt certain he'd be sick. _

_Other-him pulled a face. "Dogs?" Dogs? The word of it hung between them – between Rin and the other Aizawa, and in the space before Aizawa himself. Heavily loaded and haunted, though Aizawa couldn't place exactly why. Other-him shuffled slightly, narrowing his eyes at Rin. "Hiruma," he said, the silent force of her name surprising. Rin seemed to hold her breath, biting into her bottom lip with absent-minded agitation, and the other Aizawa leaned towards her. "There's something I've been meaning to ask you for a while now. I'd planned on waiting until after your graduation, but circumstances have evolved rather differently to what I'd thought…" _

_Rin's hands froze in her lap._

_Aizawa's stomach dropped – and though he reminded himself that it was a dream – this was a dream this was a dream thiswasadream – he wanted to scream. He didn't understand. Nothing was making sense and Rin looked frightened. _

_Other-him noticed it, but carried on. He asked her, "Do you remember me?" _

"_W-what?" _

"_From that day," he pressed. Gently. "When we first met." _

_Something cracked. Rin's hands tightened into fists against her school skirt, and Aizawa could see them tremble. Her knuckles burned white beneath her skin. She ripped her eyes away from other-him and choked out his name. Or what had once been his name. How she'd known him. "Aizawa-sensei…"_

_The other Aizawa hummed, closing his eyes. "I thought so." And when he opened them again, tilting his head at Rin, Aizawa was horrified. Inexplicably and indubitably, because other-him took Rin's hand from her lap and held it. Softly, like holding a white blossom. He held it and gazed at her as he spoke, unyielding despite Rin's own look of confusion and – fear? _

"_It shouldn't come as a surprise, but I remember you," he said. "You told me you weren't scared. You were beaten up and your lip wouldn't stop quivering, and I could tell you were absolutely terrified. But you still said you weren't." He clutched her hand tighter. Rin seemed about ready to pass out – yet, she leaned in closer to him. Close enough that the other Aizawa could have whispered and she would have heard him perfectly. Close enough for Aizawa himself to wince. Close. It was too close for what they were. _

_And yet he couldn't stop it. He wasn't entirely sure he even wanted to._

"_You don't need to be scared now though," other-him continued. And it was in the way he looked at her, the way he touched his fingers over her knuckles and spoke in a low, choked monotone – fuck. Fucking hell. Aizawa knew. "Nothing will hurt you as long as I'm around."_

_Neither of them said anything else. Only stared. Only froze and seemed to waver, the underwater iridescence catching up to them once again. A dream. A dream. As Rin turned away there was something terribly wrong about her, and Aizawa reminded himself that it was a dream. She gazed at him, seeing him at last. She wasn't real. She smiled. She started to cry. __**It wasn't real**__. And without a sound, her face began to fall apart._

_The skin began to split like a doll's being ripped, and the flesh of her throat and chest and arms followed suit. It all tore into a grotesque folding of white and bloody, horrendous red. Her insides, her veins – and Aizawa tried to scream but couldn't, nothing but a harsh scrape escaping his throat. As though cloaked by an oozing black curtain, the scene disappeared. It was only him. It was only her. Rin, her body turning itself inside out as part of an awful collage of layered skin and muscle. Her blood dripped: shocking crimson. Dripping, dripping, dripping at her feet and Aizawa's. And her veins fell out like tangled blue vines, curling in a chord-like snaking around her fingers. Her neck. Her torso. Blood still throbbed through them. There was still the undulating swell of a pulse in their dangling deadness. _

_Aizawa didn't look down. He didn't move. He could feel his own veins turning in on themselves, though there was no pain. As Rin's tied themselves into delicate swirls, so too did Aizawa's, through his limbs with numbing smoothness. Around his throat like a soothing rope. Tightening. Ever tightening in a terrible reflection of Rin's. He couldn't breathe – underwater, drowning. Blood. Blood in his mouth and in Rin's, spilling out like red wine. _

_Out from the obscurity, two gloved hands. Four. Ten. Out from behind Rin, clutching at her like meat from a buffet table. Aizawa tried to yell, to fight away the hands as they clawed and pawed at Rin – but there was only a gargling noise, the metallic burn upon his tongue as though he'd bitten into it. Hands around her veins. Pulling, greedy. Don't touch her! Leave her alone! _

_And then out from her stomach, a grinning snarl of canine teeth. _

_Aizawa's knees buckled, his veins tearing through them like tight-set wire, and he crumbled. Crumbled into the blackness. Into the pooling mess of blood beneath his feet. He gasped. His lungs burned as he swallowed down an oozing wave of liquid warmth._

And then he sat up, heaving an awful breath that set his body aching. Breathing, breathing, breathing, as though his life had never depended so much upon the flood of oxygen to his lungs. The darkness was gone, replaced by the sickly yellow glow of morning light through the crack in the curtains, and Aizawa clutched at the space next to him. There she was! Her arm, softly chiseled and in-tact, naked beneath his palm and very real. Rin stirred, moaning – the sound of it darted through Aizawa's spine with a nauseating intensity – and she rolled over to face him.

His heart pummeled against the confines of his chest, setting his skull's pain alight in a glaring scrape and stab. Aizawa curled over against himself, pressing his hands to his eyes in a bid to stifle the nausea in his gut. He groaned. He almost gagged. "Fuck," he muttered. "_Fuck_. Thank you, God." It hadn't been real. Rin's hand was on his back, solid and cool, and she was saying something he couldn't make out. Clearing his throat despite there being nothing for him to clear, he swept his arms around her torso and pulled her against him. Cradling her. Thanking whatever celestial entity would listen for the lively stiffening through her muscles.

Aizawa pressed his mouth against her forehead in a number of sloppy, desperate kisses. When at last he lay back into the pillows, his chest still heaving, he held her in place as though letting her go would mean the end of everything.

"Can I ask you something?" he murmured eventually, pulse settling to a more palatable pace.

And Rin, perhaps hungover after having downed the bottle of wine the previous evening or perhaps feeling fragile after having thrown it all up only an hour ago, groaned in response.

Aizawa asked her, "Do you ever have nightmares?"

She hummed, the sound of it travelling from her lips into Aizawa's skin. "Sometimes," she said, sounding as though she'd already fallen back asleep. "Sex helps a lot though."


	32. Sweet Dreams

Chapter 32  
Sweet Dreams

The weekend had marked itself as perhaps one of the worst weekends of Aizawa's life: underlined in black in the processes of his mind and committed to memory as one disaster after the next – as if Yukio and the Voodoo revelation hadn't been enough, Rin had also spent the whole of Sunday being horrendously moody and unaffectionate. Skulking from kitchen to bedroom to bathroom with either strong coffee in her hand or her hand over her mouth, she'd said close to nothing. Had hardly even glanced in Aizawa's direction. And though she'd puked and slept most of the day away, almost tempting Aizawa to put it all down to the unpleasantries of a hangover, she had also locked herself into stiff and steely silence before he'd even left the bed.

Aizawa didn't press her for answers, the taste of vulnerability perhaps still too raw upon her tongue. However, it had been with his own tight-headed sense of irritation that he'd left Rin to bite back her words. After he'd asked her about the nightmares – after he'd pried a little too much and apparently struck a nerve – she'd shot up to sit, eyes digging into him though her hand floated against his cheek in a gentle uneasiness. "People have nightmares about all sorts of things," she'd said, too impassioned and perhaps too quick, failing to be lulling.

"Yes," Aizawa had muttered in reply. "But what do _you _have nightmares about specifically?"

And as he had come to realise, she was a bad liar. "I don't know."

"Don't you?"

She'd stared at him dully, and without another word curled herself back into the entanglement of the bedsheets. Their bedsheets. Ever tousled, the smell of her and of him melding into something perfect in all its natural rightness. She'd bowed herself tighter, as though pressing herself into a defensive shell, when Aizawa ran the backs of his fingers down her nape; she'd said nothing when he told her not to be so self-protective. That he only wanted her to let him in.

But she sank further into herself – and so Aizawa left her alone.

What sort of answer he'd expected from her, he still wasn't sure, and as Sunday melted gradually into Monday Aizawa began to wonder why he'd even wanted an answer in the first place. Rin left the dormitories too early for him to see her, and she didn't leave her office for coffee or lunch at any time that Aizawa knew of. His class was focused – he was not, grumbling through his lessons with a disengaged frustration. Too much had happened. Children were being stolen from right under their noses – and though Aizawa resisted likening those children to his students – _it could have been them _– the sneaking anxiety still clawed at him. Here he was teaching, walling himself in with some ridiculous attempt at normality, while he was perhaps one of the few people who knew that Doctor Voodoo was alive.

That his jaws were poised over any number of unsuspecting victims; that he was dazzling in his hearty warmth all for the sake of luring children down a road to hell. Children. _Children _– and how young were those children? Toddlers? Babies? At random moments throughout the day, Aizawa shuddered. He nearly vomited after lunch, his neck going numb upon his shoulders as he leaned over his desk in the teachers' office. Trying to be subtle as he clutched his stomach. Controlled his breathing. Saying nothing when Yamada pointed out how much paler than usual he was.

And at the back of his mind: Rin's face. Though in the moment Aizawa had perhaps been too anaesthetized by shock to really notice, it was possible now to look back with piercing clarity. How her features had crumbled like sand in water, or flowers wilting, or wood burning up into ash. The monstrous thud of her heartbeat, and how desperately she'd clung to him against the icy tiles of the kitchen floor. _I could have been involved_, she'd said. The intonations brutal as they rung themselves through Aizawa – not simply in his mind's eye, but within every bone in his body. He didn't believe it for a moment. He couldn't – but that wasn't to say her words didn't plague him, that their tragedy and terror didn't poison his veins at every moment of the day. She could have been involved – No. Never. Even the devil himself couldn't have convinced Aizawa, though his teeth had already sunk themselves into Aizawa's chest.

It was both a remedy and a malady to hear Rin's voice again that night. His students had all gone to bed some time ago, and he was glaring hard into the computer screen without managing to do any actual work. His cellphone rang. Her name across the screen. And when Aizawa answered it was a struggle to speak, for his voice seemed to be lodged somewhere between his stomach and his heart. "Are you honestly calling me from only one floor up?"

"_I wasn't sure if you were still angry with me_," she said, and it was a relief to hear the slightest trace of a smile in her voice. "_It seemed safer this way_."

Aizawa leaned into his chair, rubbing his eyes. "What makes you think I was angry?"

"_You ignored me all day yesterday ~ you didn't even seem to want to cuddle even though I was bedridden._"

In spite of himself, the corner of his own mouth perked upwards. "You were the one ignoring me."

"_Never. I like you too much._" A pause. In it, Aizawa's stomach churned once again – not so much from the affliction of thought as from the relief unknotting itself throughout his insides. When Rin spoke again, it was a sweet, quiet plead. "_Is it alright for me to come talk to you in person?_"

"Please do."

Her head poked itself around his door mere moments later. Hair swept back in that messy ponytail, a pale green turtleneck sweater to hide the hickey in her neck which had grown darker instead of lighter. She watched him, lips curled in a restrained and endearing smile, and stepped coyly into the room. Closing the door behind her. Fluttering to seat herself deftly in Aizawa's lap as though it were the most natural place in the world for her to be. Arms around his neck, nuzzling her face against his like a kitten demanding attention, she spoke into his skin, "Are you marking?"

"Writing reports," he said, and curved his own arm around her back. There must have been an additional two or three layers beneath the turtleneck, her frame somewhat bulkier, and the sweatpants she wore were floppy and oversized. The only clue to Rin's fine build, like little white flowers peering out from underneath the mass of clothing, were her feet. Bare and boney, flexing and pointing in a girly restlessness. Her toe nails were painted pink. Dumbly fascinated, Aizawa touched his free hand to the top of her foot and was shocked to find it no more than freezing.

Rin turned her head to eye the computer screen. "Sounds fun," she cooed.

"Not really." And Aizawa shut it down before she could get too much of an idea of how little work he'd managed to do. He turned to look at her more fully, the colour of her eyes nearly the same as that of her sweater and still more heartbreaking in their luminous beauty, making Aizawa weak. Shadows of the weekend hung in her expression as she returned his gaze: the rings around her eyes having darkened by a shade of grey-purple, the firm-set line of her jaw and lips making her look tense and uncertain. "Just for your information, I wasn't angry with you," Aizawa said, and after a second's debate within himself added, "But you're too secretive for your own good."

Rin frowned. Leaned her head onto his shoulder with a tired sigh. "I know. I'm sorry." Her voice suddenly somber but still soft and lovely, she loosened her arms from around Aizawa's neck. "I _am_ sorry. I try not to be. Secretive, I mean."

"You do a terrible job."

"So you _are _mad."

"No. Not mad, as such," Aizawa twisted his head to kiss her forehead. He did so, and felt an inexplicable satisfaction as Rin relaxed against him. "However, you do need to stop behaving like a problem child. I don't know what you think you're going to achieve by locking me out, but I can tell you it's not going to be much."

Rin lifted her head, resigned as a sheepish flush befell her cheeks. "I just don't want you to get involved. You can't get any more involved than you already are."

"So you've said. But you've never told me why."

"It's complicated."

Aizawa huffed, pressing his hand to Rin's cheek so as to keep her from looking away. "You're doing it again. It's exhausting listening to the same thing over and over." And though he meant it, doing nothing to restrain his butting dissatisfaction, Rin pouted and looked so genuinely doleful as she leaned her face deeper into his palm – like a small dog scolded for chasing its tail – Aizawa could say nothing more. He sighed, dropping his lids in some sort of submission. "If it's a matter of trust…"

"I trust you more than anyone in the world," she said quietly, touching her own fingers to his. "But Shouta, it really _is _complicated. I wish I could tell you but I just need you to trust _me _when I say I can't."

He frowned more deeply. "Will you ever be able to tell me?"

Once again, she smiled. It was odd and slanted, and left the rest of her features with a lackluster flatness quite uncharacteristic. Nonetheless, it wasn't particularly off-putting as she sidled her legs onto either side of Aizawa's waist and traced the tips of her fingers down his chest – the touch of it only just too soft for him to feel it completely beneath his shirt: a tease. "I don't know," she said with strange lowness. "But I promise not to keep anything else a secret ~ besides this, I'll tell you everything. I won't ever stop talking. I'll tell you _so much _you'll eventually be begging me to keep quiet."

The corners of his mouth twitched upwards, though he tried to keep his voice steady as he said, "I'm serious, Rin." Even as he did so though, he snaked one hand onto her thigh and the other around her wrist as it travelled ever downwards.

Rin tilted her head. "So am I."

"Then tell me something. Tell me what kinds of things you dream about."

Unexpectedly, she smirked at him. This time, it set an ominous glimmer about her eyes, and as she leaned in to touch her lips to his ear Aizawa internally berated himself for not having been clearer in what he'd said. Because indeed, Rin told him the kinds of things she dreamed about – lewd, sensuous things that probably weren't _really _the fruits of her unconscious but were certainly enough to make Aizawa swallow his words, to fill him with a warming sensitivity as Rin continued to murmur into his ear. She said these things in purring whispers, and allowed her hand to linger suggestively in his groin. Stroking, curling her fingers in a gentle beckoning. And when she pulled away again, she giggled at what must have been the absurd redness across Aizawa's face.

He scowled at her. Rolled his eyes. Said nothing for a while until the heat had receded from his cheeks and forehead – in that time though, he swayed between being shocked at the refined filth that had come out of her mouth and being thrilled by it, banishing the inkling thought that she'd been his student only some years ago. That these were the kinds of things she'd been thinking in class. Was that possible? That that reserved, awkward teenager could have been so carnal? Aizawa didn't think so, and somehow got no pleasure out of believing otherwise.

That Rin as an adult could manage such dirty talk was a different story though. "You're very annoying," Aizawa huffed, pulling her face towards his so that their lips were but a breath apart. "Do you know that?"

"You might be surprised to learn that I do in fact know." And like a satisfied feline, she slinked out from his lap, cocking her head in a malicious show of sweetness. "But you have work to do, it seems ~ I only wanted to come by to make sure we were still friends and that you weren't as uptight as you were yesterday." She spun on her toes to meander towards the door, looking terribly pleased with herself – which both irked and confused Aizawa, given the current circumstances. He remained rooted to the chair, hands suspended in wait for Rin to turn around and come back even though she smiled while opening the door and spoke with the honeyed temptation that most certainly meant she intended to leave him dangling. "Goodnight, Shouta. I hope your dreams will be sweet ones~"

* * *

**A/N: Sort of looks like a filler chapter, but is important if you look close enough. ;) Also wanted something just a little more light-hearted after the draaaama. Follow, favourite and review lovely readers! Follow, favourite and REVIEW~***


	33. Principles

Chapter 33  
Principles

All things considered, Aizawa had been frustrated for much longer than he cared to admit – first framing it as fear over the ease with which Rin could disappear from him; now wholly unable to pretend it was anything other than the fact that he was being manipulated and he knew it. He knew it, and he allowed it: buying into Rin's diversions and persuasions as though she were some spoiled child.

Perhaps because he never quite realised it in the moment, taken up by his own feelings and her peculiar charm.

Perhaps because he'd reasoned that she was scared, and that given time she'd – she'd what? Open up like a springtime flower for him to peruse at his will and pleasure? The hindsight appalled Aizawa, and he could do nothing to deny his own maudlin pliability in her hands. Especially now, after she'd abandoned him to the emptiness of his room, where he'd spent the rest of his night sleepless and stewing. With her gone, it was easy to pick out certain abnormalities. Tiny fluctuations in her voice and touch, offbeat cadences to her words which did not seem to be entirely hers.

Indeed, though he'd been swept up by the shock of her new boldness and the excitement of such blunt desire, there'd been something wrong with it from the start. And only halfway through the week did it dawn on Aizawa that Rin had been trying way too hard. She'd lacked the quiet breeziness, the warm affection which made her so beguiling – that genuine softness which marked their early mornings and cups of coffee at the table, and moments of defenselessness in seeing her read some obscurely titled book or watch cat videos on her cellphone or stand barefoot in the kitchen while cooking dinner.

There was none of that when Rin tried to keep things hidden, when she tried to avert Aizawa's attention with a forced flirtatiousness that was mildly effective but quicker to wear off than the high of a strong cup of coffee. As had been the case that night – and though Aizawa didn't have it in himself to be angry with her even now, he was irritated. Somehow suspicious. And it overflowed into the rest of the week, where his stomach would churn and his head would throb (the headaches, it seemed, were stirred by and pounced upon any strong feelings relating to Rin) whenever she did anything mildly charming.

Terribly enough though, throughout the rest of the week, the symptoms of Monday night's falseness receded and it almost pained Aizawa when Rin looked at him – because he knew that she knew that he was being offhanded and colder than usual and that it was, for the most part, her own fault for spinning gossamer threads of half-truths around his eyes. She would smile at him, he wouldn't smile back in an attempt to remain annoyed and objective, and then her face would sink into a grey embarrassment. Blushing, mawkish and apologetic as she went about her business with a restless fretfulness: tapping the coffee cup while she drank, gnawing the back of her pen, fidgeting with paperclips and folders and sticky notes and anything else she could get her hands on.

There were moments though, where Aizawa's new guardedness would crumble – and by no intentional doing of Rin's either. She'd been busy in the dormitory kitchen, making a curry on behalf of Aizawa's students once again; the 2A and 2B girls had squeezed themselves in with her, and were chattering and giggling about all sorts like the teenagers they were. Speaking about nothing important, nothing worth remembering, and as Aizawa stood eavesdropping just outside the kitchen doorway he heard Rin laugh at something Uraraka said. She laughed: the shrill, bubbly playground giggle of a much younger girl, and it drove a relieving weakness through Aizawa's knees.

Then he'd wandered past her office with no intention of going in but only to satisfy his own curiosity. The door was open, he'd peered inside to find her mumbling – pen smooshed against her lip, nose crinkled in thought. He didn't know what she was doing, and the flustered flush across her face told him she didn't really know either. But she saw him, not yet too far-gone in thought, and had wordlessly sprung up from the much-too-large desk to flutter to where he stood. No students in the hallway. No prying eyes. Still saying nothing, she'd wrapped herself against him in a hug – stayed there for a long time, chaste and quiet with her head leaned against his chest – and then in the same unfazed silence unwrapped herself and returned to her frustrated mumblings.

And then on Thursday evening, when his students filed back into the dormitories after a full afternoon of final-prep and practice for the Culture Festival that weekend, Aizawa heard them all in the common area. Making a ruckus, oohing and chuckling and cheering as though at a sports match. And they were at a sort of sports match, it seemed, for they'd all gathered around one of the boys' laptops and were watching archived recordings of all the UA Sports Festival finals. Engrossed, they didn't notice Aizawa staring at them from the other end of the room. Rin was there too, standing some distance away from the couches with one hand squeezing at the other wrist – she noticed Aizawa, as though by some form of enchantment, and turned herself to meet his eye for the faintest moment. Looking miserable and faraway, almost as though she were sick.

And it was that look that tipped the scales for Aizawa. Which made him lose any sense of previous resolve or concern for her adamant insistence that he not be involved. She had been revealing things, he'd give her that, but the see-saw of truths and concealments had made Aizawa just too dizzy to stomach it any longer. He still wasn't angry with her – on the contrary, despite his frustration, he adored her more than ever and wanted nothing more to stand in his way of learning her fully.

He went to see Principal Nezu the next morning. Early, before the main doors to the school had been opened and while a tentative darkness still hung about the air. The view out Nezu's window was hazy and almost dreamlike, lights from the suburbs still burning dimly in the distance while a yellow glow began to crawl itself along the horizon.

Tea ready on the table, three-cheese sandwiches for breakfast – lingering over his spread, Nezu didn't seem surprised to see Aizawa coming into the office. He pricked his ears upwards, smiled flatly over his teacup. "Ah, good morning, Eraser Head!" he greeted. "Bright and early, as usual. Are your students ready for the Culture Festival tomorrow?"

"I should hope so," Aizawa said, hands held deeply in his pockets as he stopped before Nezu's desk.

"Wonderful. I'm sure all the students will outdo themselves once again. Why don't you take a seat, Eraser Head? Tea? You're looking very harried this morning – is there something I can help you with?"

Aizawa did sit, his legs feeling heavy beneath his weight and his pulse doing awful leaps through his throat. As he did so, Nezu watched him with an unusual flatness about his mousey features: nose twitching as though at the smell of Aizawa's unease, black eyes widening and narrowing in some sort of observation of his soul. It was silent for a long time, and Aizawa couldn't shake the sense that he was waiting for permission to speak. Waiting for Nezu's all-knowing consideration of him to be over with so that he could do what he'd come to do.

"Well?" Nezu prompted.

To which Aizawa told him everything. Steady, practiced, but with the simmering undertone which had been building up and swirling inside of him for days now, if not weeks. He told Nezu about the Voodoo Agency. He told Nezu about Yukio, and the things Rin had explained with shadowy chokedness, and her insistence that she was alone. Alone and that she had to stay alone. It all fell out from Aizawa's chest with that enigmatic feeling of relief – it was certainly a load off – as well as dismay: the sense that he was betraying Rin's confidence even though his dominant rationality dictated otherwise.

Somehow though, it came as no comfort how Nezu said nothing in return. Only staring, expression close to unchanging were it not for the slightest twitches at the corners of his mouth. Blank. Sipping his tea at regular intervals and making no sound other than a delicate, low slurp. Nothing seemed to come as particularly shocking, or moving, and it mystified Aizawa because it almost seemed as though he himself was being terribly absurd by bringing all this up in such a desperate flurry of words. Even though he spoke smoothly, maintaining his pretense of level-headedness, an aggressive swelling was homing itself around his innards – vile, sour.

He ended by saying something had to be done and at last Nezu hummed, placing his tea deftly down upon the matched saucer. Placing his paws together against the desk, giving Aizawa a soft and beady eye, Nezu remained in a thoughtful hush. Aizawa's heart throbbed in his ears, the last few minutes faded into the back of his mind like a series of dream-events.

Finally, Nezu said, "You've given me a lot to consider, Eraser. Thank you for sharing it all – this is quite shocking indeed." It didn't sound very shocking when it sounded like that. Nezu clapped his paws together gently. "Does Hiruma-chan know you're here?"

"She will soon enough," Aizawa muttered.

"Actually, if I may, I think it might be better if I discuss this with her myself."

"Oh?"

"Why, yes," Nezu said, the simplicity of his words an insistence in themselves. From the teapot, he poured himself more to drink, speaking casually as he did so, as though with philosophical reminiscence rather than any particular urgency, "It might interest you to know that I used to play chess with Doctor Voodoo some years back. A viciously intelligent man, and viciously competitive to match – our respective wins and losses remained quite precariously tied until the very end of our gaming-days." Surprisingly, Nezu chuckled as he took his teacup, and then became more somber, "His is a situation which ought to be dealt with carefully, Eraser Head. It will require the utmost subtlety and precision. As such, I must ask you not to discuss anything more with Hiruma-chan before I myself have had the chance to."

While not surprised, Aizawa couldn't move from his seat, glaring hard at the principal as though there were a puzzle across his features to be solved. This soft, unhurried approach wasn't uncharacteristic, and perhaps it was only Aizawa's biased eagerness to put the whole situation to rest that made him want to be sick across the floor – Nezu must have noticed it, for he cocked his head and offered a widened smile.

"You've spoken rather more harshly than usual about Hiruma-chan this morning," he just-about cooed, jolting Aizawa. "Has her situation upset you?"

Well, that much wasobvious. "I've never been particularly fond of secrecy," Aizawa said and crossed his arms across his chest. "It's not logical and makes a mess of things."

"Oh yes, quite. Though I do wonder…" Pause. Far-off glance to an arb corner in the office. Then Nezu brought his attention back to Aizawa and, irksomely, didn't continue his train of thought. "You're very fond of, Hiruma-chan. Fonder than even I expected you'd be."

Aizawa didn't know what to say. So he said nothing.

Nezu hummed. "I'm not one to interfere – or at least, to interfere _too much_–" another warm chuckle. "But I don't think you should be too unforgiving. There are many factors at play here that you – that we – might not be fully aware of. Doctor Voodoo has taken a particular interest in Rin ever since her arrival at UA, and if he has treated her as he would one of his pawns in a chess game… well… she wouldn't be trying to hide things simply for the sake of being difficult. Rest assured though, Eraser Head, the truth has a way of rearing itself. Everything will be revealed in due course."

Despite being intended as something of a comfort, Nezu's certainty offered no reprieve. Aizawa rose from the chair, thanking the principal for his time and turning away in a rush to leave. No satisfaction of knowing a plan had been made. No release from the ominous curtain that closed itself over Rin time and time again. _Of course _everything would be revealed in due course. Only, due course wasn't fast enough and Rin meant too much to Aizawa, even if she was unnecessarily difficult to be with at this stage, for the truth to only _eventually _'rear itself'.

More than that, what if it was a truth Aizawa wouldn't be able to stomach? _I could have been involved_. What if the secrets to be kept weren't just secrets kept out of fear or traumatized attempts to cope, but something more sinister?

"Eraser Head."

At the door, Aizawa paused. Looked over his shoulder to find, for the first time in his memory, the palest hint of displeasure across Nezu's serenity.

"For all Hiruma-chan's particular strengths, she's still very young. You were always so gentle with her when she was your student," Nezu gave what could only be described as a meaningful look: a loaded gaze of unspoken somethings which Aizawa had neither the energy nor the desire to dig into. Nezu flattened his paws against the table, and nodded slowly at Aizawa. "Do be gentle with her now."

* * *

The end of the day came. The final bell. The staff meeting – in which Nezu didn't even glance in Aizawa's direction with anything other than the usual engagement. Nothing was mentioned about their earlier conversation, and Aizawa was allowed to leave with the rest of the staff. With Rin, who'd been quite the same in many respects except for the fact that she'd hardly said a word (not unusual, though Aizawa's heart had sunk at the fact that her silence _was _unusual) and that when she'd looked at him from across the table, it had been with an affected uncertainty.

Darkened eyes. Lips ever so slightly downturned and lacking in any shade of pink. And when he found her again in her office – slowly filling with curiosities of her own in the form of houseplants, the painting of dogs playing poker now gone and replaced with a pencil sketch of an old man's face – she had her forehead pressed to the surface of the desk. Hair splayed. Back rising and falling steadily with slow breaths. Aizawa knocked. She bolted to sit upright, hands disappearing into her lap as her spine went stiffly straight, and she gazed at him as though in surprise. Her cheeks were flushed to a bothered red. The skin around her eyes was puffy and uncomfortable to look at. She'd been crying. Aizawa felt himself crinkle within himself.

"Are you okay?" he asked despite knowing full-well that she was not okay – suspecting that he also knew why – but being unable to form any other sort of words.

The flesh of Rin's throat tensed and jumped awkwardly, swallowing down on nothing. She spoke and it was surprisingly resolute for such a crumpled expression, for such a guilty undertone. "I've been wanting to say sorry," she said. "Again."

"Sorry for what?"

"You know for what." Her features greyed tiredly, defeatedly. "Hiding things. Trying to make you ignore the fact that I'm hiding things. I've been thinking about how to explain because I know that what I've been doing is not fair and that I upset you even though you never said so, but it's mostly–"

Aizawa interrupted her, "Stop. You don't need to." Under Rin's gaze, as her bloodshot eyes widened in disbelief, Aizawa ran his hand down the back of his neck. "Let's just go home."

Rin spluttered, obviously having prepared a speech and now having been taken off guard by Aizawa's lack of concern – or what came across as a lack of concern even to his own ears, but was really a cocktailed mix of resignation and a resolved, possibly naïve but also tender decision to trust her. Just for the moment. He knew enough at least to think he could. Blinking at him, looking as though she half-expected him to disappear before her eyes, Rin's brow crinkled delicately, "_Home_?"

"You live with me now. Remember?"

"Oh. Right~" she cracked a dewy smile. "But I was thinking I'd just stay at the dorms tonight. Some of the first years asked me to help them set up tomorrow morning for the Culture Festival. I didn't really understand when they told me what they're doing, but it sounds cute. They said~" She halted, and then bit back on the smile. Looking at Aizawa timidly. "I didn't do that on purpose."

And now it was he who smiled at her, a tight-lipped curve to his mouth that almost felt good. "I know," he said, meaning it. "It's a lot less off-putting when you're not trying to be manipulative."

He meant it as a joke based on truth. Her face tensed as though she'd licked a lemon or had been punched in the gut. "_I'm sorry_."

Rolling his eyes, going towards the desk and touching his fingers to her cheek when he came close enough, Aizawa spoke frankly. "Just don't do it again. Tell me the truth about things and we'll get along just fine." As seemed to be the fashion, Nezu's words replayed themselves in a tinny echo like listening to a scratched record. Rin stared up at him, lovely and bemused, clear-eyed despite the surrounding swollenness. Still young. She was still young, though perhaps not in the same way Nezu had meant or as Aizawa had initially understood – young body, strange mix between a young mind and old soul, a breakable combination in all its perplexity. Not to say it was an excuse, but Aizawa was feeling more lenient than the last couple of days.

He bent forward to press his mouth against her temple, where her hair was in the way and its strands only ended up tickling the front of his face. "I need to do some things at the apartment," he told her, somewhat amused by the way Rin's fingers rose absent-mindedly to touch at the place he'd kissed. She raised her eyebrows. He regretted to concede to an empty apartment, but didn't want to show any such signs of pining because… well… just in case. "Don't get too tired helping the students tomorrow," he told her. "Eri-chan's going to be coming. She'll want you to amuse her."

And at this, Rin's face brightened considerably.

* * *

**A/N: Guys… Oh my word. I didn't realise how badly the last chapter sucked, both in writing and in character. I'm so sorry. Please do forgive both myself and Rin, we're both trying our best. XD **


	34. The Culture Festival

Chapter 34  
The Culture Festival

Before Rin, the apartment had never smelled of food or perfume – there'd only ever been one coffee cup on the table, and the living room's disarray had been charmless in its scant possession of furniture and belongings. It was a roof over Aizawa's head above all else, and perhaps some months ago the idea of calling it a home would have seemed irrational. Absurd, even.

Now, however, traces of Rin lingered everywhere in subtle and innocent scatterings: her books in obscure places, sometimes books of Aizawa's own which he hadn't opened in years now at last seeing the readership they deserved; some of her clothes thrown carelessly into the cupboard or around the bedroom floor, the evidence of a childish tendency to not put things away after their use; overabundance of rice cakes in the kitchen cabinet, alongside prescribed medicines which Rin apparently never ever took as well as painkillers and an unholy amount of iron-supplement bottles. Things hardly noticeable to the naked eye.

With a certain magical quality akin to that of rain in the late night, the feeling knitting itself into the fabrics of darkness with slow subtlety until at last the sky broke open into lulling storms, these hints of Rin filled a hollow Aizawa had previously been indifferent towards. Being on his own amongst the lackluster minimalism of his shelter had never been a bother – had even been a respite. Now, it seemed wrong. No Rin. Since her arrival, it would be the first night Aizawa was alone in the apartment, and he responded in turn by pacing restlessly.

What was she up to? It was 10p.m. She could have been reading, or standing alone in the dormitory kitchen making herself a sickeningly strong cup of coffee. Bare footed or in those socks striped like candy wrappers. Drowning in layers of soft materials in defense against the dorm's disconcerting chill.

It was 11p.m. The week's heated irritation melted ever away into a dramatic pining.

The slightest things thrilled Aizawa, coming to him sporadically and with a painful shock. Rin's houseplant on the bedside table! He watered it. A pale pink scarf bundled and thrown into the back of the cupboard! He ripped off his own scarf and wrapped hers around his neck, burying his face into its folds in order to delight in the vivid glow of her smell. That picture of her and Eri baking apple pie! It was more adorable than Aizawa remembered and he stared at it for a long time.

It was midnight. In the bedroom, seated at the edge of the bed without the will to lay back, Aizawa's thumb lingered over his phone screen. He'd typed up a message, one with words he'd never said before and which he wasn't sure he really wanted to say. It seemed terribly juvenile – what was worse was the fact that he was actually nervous to send it, as though it were a momentous milestone in their relationship when really they should have been way past it. But still, like a nervy schoolboy, Aizawa narrowed his eyes at the message. At its words. Debating within himself and getting his stomach into a hard knot until at last he relented and pressed send.

And though Rin was online and typing within moments – not yet asleep; was she awake for the same reason he was? – it seemed like an age in which Aizawa's throat burned. He scanned his eyes over his words again. And again. And again,again_, _again. Their truth making him dizzy.

_Goodnight Rin. _

_I miss you. _

She replied – the shortness and simplicity of it sent a nauseating throb throughout the entirety of Aizawa's body. No words of her own.

Only a heart.

She always sent stupid faces and emojis with her messages, apparently undeterred by the fact that Aizawa himself never sent anything of the sort in return. But now a heart, lonely and red, stared through the screen – and for a fleeting moment, Aizawa fingers itched to send one back. How easy it would have been. How very easy and so very self-indulgent. Nevermind the childishness nor the vulnerability of it – for indeed, ridiculous as it may have seemed, Aizawa couldn't help but feel that sending something in return would have been just as significant as cutting out his real heart for her.

His finger remained frozen over the screen. He was going to do it. Except, he didn't, instead locking the phone and falling backwards onto the bed with a harried groan.

* * *

In a number of fleeting moments the following morning, he spied her from afar while not being noticed himself. Billowing white skirt, maroon jersey in a deep contrast to her skin's colour. Rin flitted from place to place and student to student with that sugar-white air of breezy ethereality, disappearing ever more into the flurry of people as the school grounds began to fill. Aizawa wasn't exactly trying to run into her – a creeping intuition hung over him just as the darkened clouds hung across the air, ominous with the tight chill of rain, and he hesitated constantly when confronted by such flashes of Rin's graceful vagueness, her oblivious loveliness – and yet, by twists of fate at the hands of some jealous god, he somehow always managed to just miss her.

The Festival grew crowded quickly. Class 2A's traditional tearoom teemed for most of the morning, and though there'd initially been some doubt over Yaoyorozu's idea – presented to the class with a girlish enthusiasm too hard to resist – it had dissipated steadily with the continual flow of Festival-goers. The girls swished around in delicate kimonos of autumnal, outrageous reds (courtesy of Yaoyorozu) while making a show of performing traditional tea ceremonies for their setup's visitors (their knowledge of which was, unsurprisingly, also courtesy of Yaoyorozu). Todoroki used his quirk to heat the tea to just the right temperature. The rest of the boys took turns doing… Aizawa wasn't entirely sure what.

But by midmorning, they'd all established themselves in a comfortable current of routine and it was quickly made clear to Aizawa in an approach lacking any subtlety that his supervision – however removed it may have been – was no longer needed. Breezing up to his corner table, teapots in hand and silk material rustling about their feet like folds of flame-coloured water, Uraraka and Ashido did not make a lengthy stop. Nonetheless, for all their quickness, their grins were centered without disengagement upon Aizawa.

"Everything's running smoothly, Aizawa-sensei!" Ashido cooed. "Don't you want to go enjoy the rest of the Culture Festival?"

Uraraka nodded heartily. "Apparently the third years have organised a little cat café!"

Aizawa had already been to the cat café that morning – and though he didn't mention it, instead telling the girls that he was still 'busy with his tea', he prided himself on the fact that he'd managed to make friends with a gorgeous white bobtail. He also didn't mention that he fully intended to return to the cat café later that day.

Across the peculiar black and golds of Ashido's eyes, there appeared a glimmer of something Aizawa couldn't place – not, at least, until she said with a cheeky coil to her features, "Chi-sensei also likes cats, doesn't she? You and Chi-sensei could go visit them together."

How did they know? "Chi-sensei will have already gone to the cat café."

"Then you should bring her _here_, Aizawa-sensei," Uraraka declared with that curious throatiness which flared against her excitement. "She hasn't been to see us yet! And Yaoyorozu-chan organised a special tea for her to try." A pause, in which Mina and Uraraka exchanged an eccentric glance of giddy smiles. When Aizawa raised his eyebrows at them, it was Ashido who said quite unabashedly, "Bakugo-kun is also getting antsy, sensei. He won't admit it, but we think he's been waiting for Chi-sensei to show up."

Uraraka hummed in agreement. "And we're worried he's going to start scaring people away real soon."

Hard to argue when Bakugo's temper was on the line. However, more than out of any sense of concern, Aizawa left his class's tearoom in a languid state of agitation. For reasons beyond his grasp, 2A's affection for Rin continued to leave a sinking feeling in his gut – not only Bakugo but _especially _him, who fell into a hard-set silence whenever Rin was around. A few times over the last weeks, Aizawa had spotted them walking down the hallway together. Bakugo carried her books. Bakugo trailed behind her while she spoke gently and deftly with hypnotic hand gestures, his brow furrowed as though he himself were confused and concerned by his partiality.

But why should Aizawa have been uneasy when his own feelings for Rin were a consummate blend potent enough to leave him awake and stewing over little aspects of her in the most secretive hours of the night?

Face buried deep into the folds of his scarf, Aizawa skulked through the hallways and out into the gardens. There, more food stalls lined the paths; red leaves blew around his legs in tiny hurricanes of colour and all around him, streams of faces both familiar and not scurried past in a sprightly flurry of activity. Shrill screams and playground laughter carried amongst the chatter in unidentifiable falsettos. Smells of things being deep-fried in places; slighter smells of burned coffee in others. Veering out from the path of the crowds, Aizawa pulled his phone from his pocket and eyed the screen in hopes of finding Rin's name – but alas, there was only the picture of her and Eri staring back, his latest wallpaper.

An icy breeze sliced against the skin of his cheek. He carried on through the twisting length of stands and students and visitors, not stopping when he spied Principal Nezu chatting to a stranger, plastic coffee cup in hand. Attempting avoidance, Aizawa swerved but caught Nezu's eye – nodded, received a raised paw in a still-show of a wave – and then averted his gaze and worked his way onwards in a cold aloofness.

* * *

Only at the opposite end of the grounds did he eventually find Rin. Rin and Eri. Huddled up close on one of the benches while they nibbled on taiyaki – and from a distance, oddly enough, they could easily have been sisters. Like two white fairies (Eri-fairy: it had a ring to it) or angels in disguise, almost glowing in their pale softness amongst the backdrop's warm shock of red and orange. Eri's hand clutched Rin's knee, and she swung her legs while talking animatedly with the doughy clumping of taiyaki in her mouth. In the meantime, Rin nodded, and pulled the same faces Eri did, and every now and then said something in reply that must have thrilled the younger girl marvelously – for Eri's eyes would widen, her lips pursing in charming thought before spreading into that slight, sheepish smile so lovely.

Eri had on a bright pair of yellow rain-boots, and a dark dress with puffed sleeves to match Rin's sweater. Over her shoulder, her hair had been twisted into a plait much too perfect for Togata to have done it – for all his brotherly strengths, doing Eri's hair had proven time and time again to be a task far too complex for him to handle – and once or twice while Aizawa approached, Eri lifted her hand from Rin's knee to touch at the girlish styling, absent-minded but with clear pleasure.

And when Aizawa at last came close enough for them to notice, a buzzing enchantment drove itself through his stomach: both Rin and Eri's faces brightened to see him, though he'd thought they couldn't possibly have brightened anymore. Eyes glimmering, green and crimson respectively. Eri's back straightened. She discarded the half-eaten taiyaki to the side and cried a delighted, "Ojisan!"

Aizawa crouched before her and listened with tender courtesy as she recounted the morning events with the same slow indulgence one would offer a story about a honeymoon or overseas holiday – after arriving with Togata, who had handed Eri over to Rin for the short span of an hour in the face of the younger girl's excitement, the two of them had spent most of their time playing with the cats at the cat café before heading out for a small morning snack. They'd watched Class 2B's drama (a new take on last year's, this time with some incorporation of Disney themes, which was also where Rin had been the one to do Eri's hair) and had said an energetic hello to Midoriya when they ran into him outside the school's main doors.

Now here they were, enjoying fresh taiyaki before getting something to drink.

"You've been busy," Aizawa said to Eri, though he glanced to Rin – and she in turn tilted her head, offered Aizawa an engaged and affectionate smile. "Someone is selling juice just over there. Take this–" Aizawa pulled out a small amount of money from his pocket, handing it to Eri, "–and go get yourself something. Come right back though."

Eri nodded, taking the money and beginning her journey from the bench towards the stall Aizawa had indicated. Any number of times though, she looked back, smiled sheepishly when she realised Rin and Aizawa had not yet abandoned her, and then continued on her way with ever more hesitant steps. She had only just started venturing out on her own – small undertakings of independence were supposed to be good for her, though the uncertainty with which she carried out her tasks was almost heartbreaking.

As Eri's little frame receded, never quite out-of-sight, Aizawa seated himself next to Rin. Close enough for their legs to be sidled next to each other despite the ample offering of space. Close enough for her lean into him, and for his arm to deftly balance itself across her shoulders. She took another bite of her taiyaki, the subtle smell of red beans and dough slightly pasty, before saying, "I was wondering where you were."

"I've been with my class."

"You've been avoiding me." They twisted their heads to look at each other, Rin's smile still against her lips but with a vague, sweet unhappiness. "Are you still upset?"

So she _had _noticed him. Aizawa narrowed his eyes, touched his fingers to her arm in a soft stroking of her jersey's material. Not upset – he wasn't upset. It wasn't so simple as that, besides which it didn't seem to be directed at her. Since arriving at the school that morning, Aizawa had been haunted by an elusive apparition like smoke. It settled around his throat, made everything hazy and suspicious to the extent that he struggled to breathe right. Maybe it had to do with Rin. But it wasn't because of her.

After scanning his eyes briefly over the surrounding festivities, finding no one's attention upon them apart from Eri's occasional glances while she waited for her juice, Aizawa shuffled to press his lips to the cool, fleshy plain of Rin's cheek. Short and chaste, but loving. Anxious under the pressure of being watched by both familiar and unseen eyes – and when Aizawa withdrew, keeping his face close to Rin's, he shared with her a passing smile, awkward in its angling but at the same time enough to make her shoulders relax underneath his touch.

"It seems my class has been waiting for you to come for tea," he said. "I think they'd be very happy if you and I went together."

Nose crinkling. Lips perking in the corners. "I'd like that~" and then she held up the taiyaki to him. "Want a bite?"

* * *

Togata had come for Eri at the end of the hour, and had chattered excitedly with Aizawa for some time over matters of no importance – _Tamaki and Neijire's wedding is just around the corner! Will I be seeing you there, Aizawa-sensei? What about you, Rin-chan? _– while Eri and Rin said their drawn-out, overly-affected goodbyes. Long hugs. Rin had kissed Eri on the forehead like a doting older sister or cousin and Eri, usually not so fond of physical affection, fed into it like a much younger child relishing their reward for good behaviour. In turn, she demanded the same from Aizawa, embarrassingly unabashed when she said, "Like you gave Rin-chan."

After that, their short time together before returning to 2A's tearoom passed in a cloud-dimmed state of comfort. They meandered amongst the food stalls, not looking either way but also in no rush to leave, making no attempts to force conversation and instead sinking into wholesome silence – at one point, Rin's fingers grazed his, an invitation to hold her hand. If he wanted to. He did want to.

There was no real reason why he didn't, really, except that by the time he had worked up the confidence to actually touch her under the freely prying eyes of the public, a shrill and unappetizing voice grated against his ears – and unfortunately, in an instinctive turn of events, Aizawa flinched away from Rin in the same way she sometimes did from him. Turning to the source of the voice, his insides doing a dip in dismay, Aizawa found the turquoise-headed pest of all his dreams and nightmares coming towards them.

"Eraser Head! I was so hoping we'd run into each other!"

Miss Joke.

It shouldn't have come as such a surprise that she was there – any number of pros came to the Culture Festival every year; it was, after all, an open event. However, frozen and feeling Rin stare into the side of his head before she turned her own gaze towards the other woman, subdued and quite suddenly with that choked aura of anxiety, Aizawa felt himself sink into a pit of horrors. Had it been for this, that feeling of foreboding which had been following him since the earliest morning?

"Whew!" Miss Joke began, now face-to-face with Aizawa and turning at times to grin at Rin. "The Culture Festival gets bigger every year, doesn't it, Eraser? I've been looking for you! Long time no see, right? You've missed me, haven't you?" Focusing more intently, with more overwhelming joviality than Aizawa could resist, on Rin. "Sorry! We haven't met!"

Rin didn't budge but offered a smiling suffocation of her own name, followed by words of equally cold-warmth, "You must be Miss Joke."

And then it got worse.

"It's Mrs Eraser Head-to-be, actually!" Joke guffawed, stretching out her arms to clutch Aizawa's arm. His spine stiffened, his mouth turned downwards sourly at the touch. "It's been a long time coming – hasn't it, Eraser?"

And though Aizawa offered nothing but blunt objection, Rin was quiet. Widened her eyes. Pursed her lips. His heart did an awful backflip at the look on her face: green in the widest sense of the word as she tilted her head at him and then at Miss Joke. "You're an old girlfriend?" Back to Aizawa, growing paler rather than pinker with any sort of blush, and then back to the other woman with all the innocent questioning in the world – there was no hint of malice in her words, only the purest form of surprise and disbelief in her gullibility; and it would have been endearing were the joke of it not so shockingly terrible, all things considered. "That's…" Rin lifted a finger to scratch at the corner of her mouth, "… not what I would have expected."

"An unlikely pair, I know," Miss Joke touched a gloved hand to Rin's shoulder, not seeming to notice the way her features pulled awkwardly at the contact. "But that's the best sort, isn't it Hiruma-san? Opposites attract, after all!"

Rin looked about ready to faint. "Uh-huh ~ _opposites_ ~ right."

Wrong. It couldn't have been any more wrong. Finally, with a new clearness about himself and his mind, Aizawa reached out to grasp Rin's hand. "Actually," he tightened his hold, making a show of it and not really caring which students saw, he eyed Miss Joke seriously, watching her features sink – for the first time, from what he could remember – in genuine shock, "I think that's enough for one day, Joke. You need to get some new material."

Rin gawked at him, but did nothing to remove her hand from his.

Miss Joke fell into unwieldly silence for a moment, eyes falling over the tender hand hold and then over Aizawa's best attempt at a stern expression. "Oh. _OH_." And then she cracked a grin; gave a loud, embarrassed laugh which attracted a number of other eyes. "My bad. I thought you were mine for the taking, Eraser – didn't know." Another laugh, somehow wrong but failing to make Aizawa feel bad, and Joke then spun on her booted toes to walk the opposite way. Still cackling, only now with an unusual falseness.

Clutching Rin's hand more fervently, now anxiously aware of the quashing sensation of the crowds' curious eyes – some within familiar faces – as they stole glimpses of the scene, Aizawa cleared his throat. "Ignore her."

"So she isn't an old girlfriend?"

"Fuck, no." And though Aizawa had something more to say, not about Joke but about Rin – about how if there was ever to be a supposed Mrs Eraser Head, there was only one candidate who'd caught his eye – he bit down on his tongue and pulled her onwards with more insistent eagerness to the tearoom.

* * *

Despite the mortification of the moment, they returned with relative ease to a softer, more restful air once again. If anything was to be said about the run-in, it was that it ended up not being all that unfortunate because Aizawa, in a charmed daze of protectiveness and possession, swallowed the discomfort he hadn't realised he'd felt and yielded to Rin's harmless attempt at affection. He held her hand. He held it the rest of the way back to his class, and kept her there even when she tried to pull away.

Because really, if everyone knew already, his fingers tied with hers against the chilled weather and the fascinated stares of his students should not have been the first of his worries. Should not have been part of his worries at all, actually – and in a way, with the deed having been done, with her smile going giddy when he kissed her on the lips before rounding the corner to his class's setup, it did all melt away into a warmth both strange and euphoric. He'd never entertained the notion of being so blatant about his feelings. Had it been suggested to him any number of months ago, he would probably have pulled an awful face. Now though, it seemed right. It seemed natural and fair that everyone should know that he thought Rin was beautiful, and that he adored her, and that she was his.

But perhaps it was just the high of potentially finally having gotten Miss Joke off his back.

Either way, Aizawa kept his hand in Rin's when Iida greeted them at the door. The boy went red in the face and obviously took great pains to look Aizawa in the face when he spoke. "I'll get the girls to prepare two cups, Aizawa-sensei! Chi-sensei! On behalf of Class 2A, I hope you both enjoy! _Excuse me_!"

Yaoyorozu brought the special blend for Rin to try – some mix of berries and wildflowers, apparently, though Aizawa himself did not take any care to taste it – after which the rest of the girls took turns coming to their table. Flushed faces. Grins equally as dizzy as Rin's. They would chatter like fluttering birds about all sorts and sweet nothings, and then would disappear once again in a flurry of distracted energies.

There was no sign of Bakugo.

There was no need for Aizawa to ever let go of Rin's fingers.

Leaning her elbow against the table, free hand curved in a limp comfort against her cheek, Rin was telling him about something ridiculous one of the first years told her that morning. She was smiling. No invisible walling cut itself between them, the freedom of it wonderful and dream-like and almost too good to be true.

"Are you listening?" she asked him after a while.

"Not really."

A giggle. Childish and true. "Didn't look like it." And then – cruel twist! – she let go of his hand to hold the teacup to her lips.

Roughly an hour passed before they left again, the room having cleared itself out and the Culture Festival's surrounding air beginning to reach its afternoon slump. More boldly, after waving a bell-like goodbye to Aizawa's class, Rin curled her arm into his and pressed herself fondly against him as they walked. Towards the door – it was possible to hear Ashido squeak behind them. Out into the hallway – where Aizawa considered the possibility that it wasn't too early for them to go back to the apartment, but not before a final stop by the cat cafe.

He was going to say something. Wanted to say anything.

But then there came another voice – "Hello Rin" – and for the first time, as though being jolted awake with all the force of ice-cold water, Aizawa became piercingly aware of the bitter odour of smoke in the hallway and of Rin's touch disappearing from him in a dash of sudden fright or desperation.

They both turned.

A man was leaned against the wall, tall with the slender quality of a spider. He balanced a cigarette between his lips, its ashiness nothing compared to his clammy pallor. A pallor only exacerbated by the sharp, sheer whiteness of his hero costume. Bloody black eyes watched Rin. Only Rin. And the thin lips turned upwards. And the pointed features coiled into a devilish handsomeness Aizawa recognised immediately – the hero named Paper Cut. Or the once-was hero. Doctor Voodoo's head side-kick.

"Been a while, hasn't it sweetheart?" Paper Cut said, taking the cigarette between his gloved fingers to lick his lips. Still, his gaze did not shift from Rin, and a sick pleasure crossed his features as she angled herself as far away from Aizawa as the space between him and the wall would allow.

Sallow and raspy, Rin made a sound Aizawa had never heard escape her lips. She stared. She seemed to crumple into a most pathetic, sickening shape – and then she said a name. A horrid, frightened gasp. "Kizashi."


	35. Kizashi

Chapter 35  
Kizashi

"Don't look so unhappy to see me, Rin," Paper Cut said, a slow illusion of smoke swirling out from the corners of his mouth like something of myth. He straightened himself – considerably taller than Aizawa even a short distance away – and pressed one, gloved hand into his pocket. With the other, he made an exaggerated show of tapping his cigarette so that its sprinkling of ashes circled to the floor. "You've been trying _so hard _to find us, haven't you? Well," he purred. "_Here I am_."

He made no move to attack. Had the disinterested slink of a feline to all his gestures, lazy and graceful. And at the sight of it, at how the vampirically darkened eyes clung to Rin with predatory thrill, a vile sharpness pierced through Aizawa's gut. He bit down hard on his tongue. His hand was ready around his scarf before he even became aware of lifting it – and at last, rolling his head along his shoulders, Paper Cut turned his gaze. The neat, fiendish smirk fell into a sour curve of displeasure.

"No need for that, Eraser Head." Deep drag of his cigarette – somehow, right then, it didn't seem particularly important to Aizawa that smoking wasn't permitted on school grounds. "I'm only here for a little chat. Causing a scene would be unnecessarily bothersome, don't you think?"

Aizawa kept his hand tensely around his scarf, saying nothing. Rin said nothing either, but in her silence was a glaring dread impossible to ignore. The distance between them was fragile, tainted, and Aizawa's limbs were heavy with the aching to bundle her away.

In his earliest days as an independent pro, Aizawa had worked for a very (read: _very_) short time alongside Doctor Voodoo. For the experience. For which he was now inexplicably ashamed.

In that time, he saw more of Paper Cut than he did of the Voodoo head. Paper Cut had been working for the Agency for any number of years, enough to have established himself as the head sidekick and to have developed a reputation both unsettling and impressive – a reputation which some debated as unethical, but which proved time and time again to be thoroughly effective. He hardly ever lifted a finger to fight, preferring instead to glide from corner to corner of the battlefield in evasion of any punch thrown his way. Indeed, his body's natural litheness did not strike one as an offensive advantage. But it was for reasons beyond combative weakness (for indeed, he lacked nothing in terms of skill) that he strayed from the usual norms.

Paper Cut's special talent was pure psychological abuse. Gnawing at the well-studied sore spots of his opponents. Plucking at the seams of mental wellbeing. Plucking, plucking, plucking: degrading other parties into a stumbling, triggered disarray. And when said opponent – played with like a crocodile's pray – was battered enough, Paper Cut would make one final strike with all the slicing poise of a snake. Often bloody. Often with a harshness which was overkill for a pro. Afterwards he'd watch his opponent tremble and would casually pull out a cigarette and smoke with all the pleasant nonchalance in the world as though crimson wasn't sharp across his fingertips.

He'd smoke.

And then sometimes, with villains he deemed particularly troublesome, he'd press the red-singed cigarette into their necks or faces or palms. Doctor Voodoo had warned him off of this habit many times. Aizawa himself had nearly yanked Paper Cut's arm off back in the days. And yet, Paper Cut never stopped.

Rin murmured something Aizawa missed, and at the small, tinny sound of her voice he was suddenly overcome by an onslaught of horror mixed with rage.

Two steps forward, the tap of Paper Cut's pristinely polished boots muted against the tiled floor. He held the cigarette up in something of a show, twiddling it between his long fingertips, and cocked his head. "Tell me, Rin. Eraser Head. Have you two enjoyed playing house?" Smooth hum, wholly without the smoker's rasp. "We were very surprised by the things Yukio told us. Almost didn't believe it." The blackened eyes, with peculiar shadows very much like Rin's, focused in on Aizawa and sent a sick thrill down his spine. His hand remained ready over his scarf, and Paper Cut's white lips spread into a whiter grin. "I mean, of course we all knew Rin had the hots for teacher – she never said it, but we all knew how she would always run off to _Aizawa-sensei _whenever something didn't go her way. How she'd cuddle up to _Aizawa-sensei _and cry to _Aizawa-sensei_–"

"Stop it, Kizashi," Rin spoke at last, voice steady and resolute – however, when Aizawa turned his head to her, her frame remained crinkled and trembling. Her eyes locked onto Paper Cut – Kizashi – in quite the same way as the mouse, powdery white and with water along its lashes, would lock its eyes onto the snake.

"Oh. So she speaks," Kizashi cooed, condescending. Two more steps forward. Rin's fingers flinched at her sides and Aizawa made to step in front of her, eliciting a peeved twitch to Kizashi's smirk.

Aizawa held his breath. Reminded himself not to listen because everything Paper Cut said would be unholy defilements of the truth.

"My, my, sweetheart. You've really got him wrapped around your pretty little finger." Kizashi wet his lips suggestively, red tongue flaring against his pallor, and then ravished the cigarette once again. "And after _everything you did_. I won't lie, Rin, when Yukio told me the lengths you went to, I thought _never_. The sweet, precious little girl _I_ knew would never have been so conniving and manipulative – oh! Don't look at me like _that_, my love. It breaks my heart… Unless… _Oh! _Oh no, no, you silly little girl, don't tell me he still _doesn't remember_…"

Defilements of the truth. Defilements of the truth.

Still, Aizawa glanced to Rin and caught her looking at him, lovely features greyed and terrified. Her lips were parted to speak, drawing in a stuttering breath before she did so. She said his name, feeble whisper, and then Kizashi gasped.

"Rin, Rin, Rin. After all this time."

Aizawa's scarf flared upwards around his neck, and he glared with the greatest venom he could muster. "Leave, Paper Cut. Now. Otherwise you'll regret it."

"Not going to call the police on me then, Aizawa-sensei?" Casual sigh. "I think you'd sooner know the truth, wouldn't you? It must burn, wanting her to be all yours with that pretty face and those pretty ways – trust me, Eraser Head, I know." Puff of the cigarette. Kizashi breezed a cloud of smoke out from his throat. "I know. _I know_. I loved her too. I would sooner slit my own throat than have to re-listen to the things Yukio told us."

"Shouta," Rin murmured, and her fingers touched Aizawa's tentatively. "It isn't–"

"It isn't _what_, Rin?" the new viciousness in Kizashi's voice, his face having contorted vilely to match, made Rin jerk her hand away once again. For the first time, Kizashi narrowed his eyes at her. "It isn't what I say it is? Is that it? Don't be such an idiot, Rin. You can't flounce around leading a double life, wearing aprons and giving Aizawa-sensei sweet kisses during the day and then sneaking out windows at night to go hunting for ghosts."

A metaphor? It wasn't Paper Cut's style to be rhetorical.

"I mean, really, Rin," he continued. "Why did you make Yukio take away his memories if you're only going to drag him back into all of this?" Lies. "_Huh_? Because you just fucking can't say no when Aizawa-sensei makes eyes at you?" Had he been the one making eyes? "Yukio told us everything, Rin. _Everything_." As though to punctuate the words, Kizashi flicked the spent cigarette from his fingers to the floor at Rin's feet.

Its rim glowed with the anger of embers. A thin ribbon of dying smoke curled upwards. As though it were a dangerous spider, Rin snubbed it beneath her shoe with an exaggerated quickness.

In spite of himself, indulging in only a moment of doubt, Aizawa looked to her once again – and she was looking at him, and with a sinking terror Aizawa considered the possibility that everything Kizashi said was true. He hated himself for it, because his heart and brain pulled in any number of directions begging him to believe it **wasn't**. That there were things Rin was keeping from him (yes, he knew this, he knew this and really deep down almost didn't mind because if she was with him he didn't care) but that Kizashi's words were twisted with spite and intrigue and all the baseness required to strike a stake through his chest. Because the truth was never so clear-cut – the truth was never so raw and simple and Kizashi used that to his advantage. But Rin had asked Yukio to make Aizawa forget – forget what? And why didn't she deny it? Why did she look so scared?

Why did she look so scared?

Though Aizawa's scarf continued to remain poised around his neck, his guard dissipated – and that was it. He had been played with. And within unnoticed seconds, Kizashi was right up against Rin and his lips were to her ear, breathing out words that floated upon the remnants of cigarette smoke, words that Aizawa couldn't hear but that made Rin clutch Kizashi's wrist as it lingered over her hip. And Aizawa couldn't move. Or he could, and he did, but it was with an iron-clad slowness that made him too heavy to reach Kizashi before he planted a serpentine kiss against Rin's cheek. And her hand flew across his face with a sickening _thwack_. Slow motion. Kizashi shot a sharp-toothed smile at Aizawa, cheek flaring into poison redness.

And then a greeting so soft it was jolting – "Ah! Paper Cut, is that you? My, my, it has been rather a long time since you came to visit our school" – forced itself between the scene.

Kizashi's features dropped and he slinked backwards. Shoulders back. Sharp chin poised as though to balance an invisible object before his enemy. Aizawa allowed his scarf to fall gently back down, lifting a hand to grasp Rin's shoulder as he did so – as he turned to face the source of the voice which shouldn't have been so calm, so inviting. Rin was still. Perfectly and sickeningly still.

Principal Nezu, hands behind his back as he toddled up towards them, smiled at Aizawa. And at Rin's frozen back. And then past them both to smile, with unaffected warmth, at Kizashi.


	36. Truths

Chapter 36  
Truths

Though with a new reserve, Kizashi did nothing to retreat from the hallway – on the contrary, he glanced from Nezu to Rin to Nezu again, carved features assuming a distant coolness which glimmered in a grey mix of displeasure and greed. He eyed the way Aizawa's hand was balanced upon Rin's shoulder: eyebrow perking sharply, corners of his mouth screwing subtly into a snarl. And beneath Aizawa's touch, not lifting her own eyes to return Kizashi's look of menace, Rin's slight frame trembled. She was stiff, unyieldingly so, and her fingers toyed with anxious agitation like dancing spiders at her side. It stabbed through Aizawa, drained him and set a chaotic shudder through his bones.

Worse still was the way Nezu continued to smile at Kizashi with all the genial calm in the world, as though the man were a guest and not the spawn of the devil.

By this, Kizashi did not seem particularly put-out. Suspicious, perhaps, for his hands disappeared behind his back and he offered Nezu an obstinate stare. Silence, for some moments, and then a silken reply following which a spitting of venom would not have been out of place. "UA's festivals have always fascinated me," Kizashi said and, for the first time, his eyes flickered towards Aizawa. "Personally, the Sports Festival is my favourite." Back to Nezu. "But this is most enjoyable as well. _So much to do_, so much to see."

"Oh, quite!" Nezu agreed with a flat, unsettling enthusiasm. "Our students have been working very hard. I assume you were coming for Class 2A's tearoom – I was just about to head in myself to enjoy a cup of jasmine. Why don't you join me, Paper Cut?" Aizawa's blood ran cold, but Nezu pressed on without so much as a hint of hesitation. Smilingly. In genuine invitation. "I would be very interested to hear how you've been keeping."

Rin shot Nezu a look, the nature of it indecipherable behind her insipid alarm. In doing so, she shifted her shoulder with airy grace out from under Aizawa's palm, and muttered something indistinct. Kizashi noticed. A sneer angled itself into his features – and Aizawa's heart did a mortified bound between his throat and lungs. Paper Cut was allowed nowhere near his class. The stifling blackness that settled itself upon Rin's back was nightmarish. And Nezu did nothing about it. The exact opposite, as a matter of fact.

"I'm sure you would, Principal Nezu. Things have certainly been very… hmm, how shall I say?" Kizashi cocked his head in Rin's direction. "Very _interesting_ since Doctor Voodoo's death."

"Of course. It's all terribly tragic," Nezu said. "You have my condolences."

"Oh, yes. Tragic. Very." Kizashi hummed in mocking thought. "But please do excuse me now," he pulled a box of more cigarettes from his pocket, shaking it amiably for Nezu to see. "I'm only stopping by. You know how it is – we underground heroes shouldn't stay out in the light for too long. Isn't that right, Eraser Head? _Rin_? It wouldn't suit us."

"What a pity. Are you sure you wouldn't like to stay for a cup?" Nezu opened his arms in a welcoming gesture. "Eraser Head's class is marvelously charming."

"So I've heard. They were all over the news last year, yes?" Kizashi, red tongue flicking across his lips once again, flashed his teeth at Aizawa. "It pains me terribly to leave without meeting them – you know I've always been fond of children, Principal Nezu. Especially those with a more mischievous streak." And horrifyingly enough, children also liked Kizashi. Paper Cut. He'd charm them with origami. With handsome smiles and flattery. Which was _exactly _why Aizawa would sooner die than let him go near his students. Kizashi took out a cigarette from his box, placing it between his teeth without lighting it. "Though perhaps I'll come back. Soon, I think. I'm simply _dying _to meet the boy who transferred from the general studies department – the one with the brainwash quirk. Remarkable thing. You wouldn't happen to have a lighter, would you?"

Nezu chuckled. "I'm afraid smoking isn't allowed on the school grounds, Paper Cut."

Kizashi shook his head, as though acknowledging his own absurdity. "Of course." He removed the cigarette, twiddled it between his fingers. "My mistake. Well then, goodbye for now." Slowly, boots doing their elegant tap against the tiles, Kizashi came towards Aizawa. Towards Rin. Cigarette still between his fingers.

Aizawa didn't move, but his hands remained poised to slice at Kizashi's throat. Following the other man with his eyes. Feeling Kizashi's own black stare pierce into him.

He paused for the slightest moment before them both, lifting the cigarette to balance it close to Rin's face. Hastily, Aizawa glanced to her; she glared at Kizashi, was biting way too hard into the corner of her lip. And as Kizashi brought the unlit cigarette towards her, its thin shape glinting like gunmetal in the reflection of Rin's eyes, she grabbed at Aizawa's hand and clutched it with all the force of death. An instinctive movement. A weird sound escaping her throat as she did so.

Like a flower, Kizashi pushed the cigarette into Rin's hair, behind her ear. "You have my congratulations, Aizawa-sensei. She's a catch. She simply _must _make you her pork dumplings sometime – those were _my_ _favourite_."

And then he slinked on down the hallway and out of sight, disappearing around the corner, leaving a hateful burn in the deepest pits of Aizawa's soul. Nezu didn't notice. Ignored the way Aizawa snatched the cigarette from Rin's hair, or the way Rin began to sway as though she'd been holding her breath for too long – which she had been, with the clammy paleness to match. Indeed, without acknowledging for even the most fleeting moment the sickness of the situation, without once looking at Aizawa in a passing understanding of what had just transpired, Nezu tapped the side of Rin's limp wrist. The movement of it almost seemed casual. Jovial, even.

"Hiruma-chan! You look glum. Come, _you _should join me for tea."

"Principal Nezu, I–"

"A pot of chamomile, I think. Yes, yes, chamomile should be just fine!"

Nezu began his teeter towards the door – and Rin, lifeless, made no further attempt to object. Instead, her hand slipped from Aizawa's and she followed the principal with her head sagging down. A shamed hanging. Distracted, heavy drag to her feet. Not meeting Aizawa's gaze for even a second, apparently oblivious to the choked sound of his voice as he said her name in a panicked, crushing plea, she left him to the haunted hush of the corridor.

* * *

He waited for her until the school had been thoroughly and truly emptied – until which, determined and silently raging, he scoured the grounds for any sign of Paper Cut or Yukio or (God forbid) Doctor Voodoo himself. Naturally though, Aizawa may as well have been hunting for phantoms, because as he was most perfectly aware the Voodoo Agency had a particular skill for dissolving into the shadows. Gone. Vanished. Just like that. _Just like that. _And the knowledge sent a white strike of fury across Aizawa's vision. Paper Cut had been right there – _right there _– and Nezu, who could do nothing to feign the adequate ignorance, had let the fucking bastard get away.

Now he was – and would likely remain – nowhere to be found.

The sun began an orange dip along the horizon. Stragglers remained around the school gardens while the stalls and stages were dismantled, hidden away, set aside into hibernation until the next year's festival. Aizawa had returned to Class 2A's tearoom to find it emptied of visitors, his students having returned to their normal clothes rather than the quaint kimonos as they packed up – no Nezu and, more terribly, no Rin. "Chi-sensei left a while ago already," Yaoyorozu had told him. "Sorry, Aizawa-sensei, but she didn't say where she was going," Asui had said.

And when Aizawa began his lurk back out the door, Bakugo had been there watching him. Eyes narrowed, but with a softness quite oxymoronic upon his aggressively boyish and boyishly aggressive face. Tray of teapots between his hands. Querulous frown to match his silence.

Aizawa stopped. Gazed at the boy. "Something the matter, Bakugo?"

"No."

"Alright then."

Naturally, that should have been the end of it. But Aizawa lingered, watching Bakugo's features twitch and harden. For all his belligerent inaccessibility, Bakugo had a face that failed to hide anything – and what was clear right then was that he was thinking. Thinking hard; and soon enough, he caved. "That asshole-creep that came by earlier. The one in the white. What did he say to Chi-sensei?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"_I _don't. But there was – I mean, she didn't drink any of the shitty tea."

Aizawa hummed, though it came across as more of a grunt, and he tugged at his scarf. "I'm taking care of it."

He continued on his way past, and upon reaching the door just managed to hear over his shoulder as Bakugo muttered, "Yeah. You better fucking well be." Aizawa was neither shocked by the overprotective insistence nor offended by the condescension – because frankly, he agreed. He better fucking well take care of it.

The spot where he'd found her with Eri earlier that day was uninhabited, cold and still as a graveyard. None of the first years had seen her after she'd finished helping them set up their various stands. Aizawa spent the good part of an hour walking, pacing, dashing up and down – however, Rin continued to elude him as much as the evening's lethargic breeze. He phoned her once without answer: the familiar sound of the ring ring ring echoing off into unanswered oblivion.

More pacing. Redialing clumsily, the photo of Eri and Rin alight in the background. Endearing without being a comfort. Mocking him, the sweetness and domesticity haunting. _Ring_. _Ring_. _Ri– _It stopped at last!And there was a silence on the other end of the line. Aizawa held his breath. Waited. "Rin?" he murmured. "Rin, where are you?"

The hush endured some time longer, until finally being broken by a timid sound like Rin clearing her throat. Low monotone, soaked in a pastel-soft melancholy. '_At your apartment._'

"When did you–?"

'_I'm leaving_.'

Everything stopped.

"What?"

A pause to rival the length of centuries. '_I'm sorry._'

The simplicity of the statement crashed upon Aizawa in a shattering brutality. Left him reeling as though he'd been slammed through the lungs with a mallet. Quiet for a long while, he stared out at the path extending to the main gate. Scatterings of life. Blurs of colour and movement suddenly unreal, like a film burned at the edges and faded with time. He hadn't heard right. She was leaving. Leaving the apartment? Leaving him? He hadn't heard right. He couldn't have. "Just–" He couldn't have. "Don't… Just wait there. I'm coming. I'll be there soon."

She said his name. The sound of it was poetry and pain, and in his mindless rush Aizawa refused to let it break his heart. "I'm coming."

* * *

Two bags in the entranceway – bags which, mere weeks ago, Aizawa himself had carried through the front door. Everything was wrong: the fading light as it struggled through the window, falling in sickly hues of yellow; the smell, Rin's blossomy perfume and the scents of cooking not reaching Aizawa as though having been scrubbed from the air; and Rin herself, wilted over the couch in a daze. She stared ahead, drunk or drugged out or exhausted enough to not give a shit as Aizawa edged towards her.

One coffee cup on the table, on the end furthest from the couch and still steaming in its fullness.

Despite the coldness which crept through the space, Rin's jersey was off and flung over the armrest next to her. Strappy grey shirt. Scars zig-zagging down her arms in ugly beauty, bulging and fleshy over the litheness of her limbs. _Oh_. One of the dining chairs had been pulled from the table, placed before the coffee cup. Aizawa seated himself, unable to tear his attention from Rin though she refused to settle her eyes over him. _Oh. Oh god. _His body ached from the coursing dread. His heart throbbed in his ears – he tried to remind himself that she'd waited for him; she was still here and it counted for something. He'd take care of it. It would be fine.

Everything Paper Cut had said was lies. Defilements of the truth, he repeated to himself. Defilements of the truth.

Her name slid against Aizawa's tongue, the sensation of the syllable a struggle against his throat's tightness. In turn, Rin swallowed hard on nothing. No reply. She swallowed again, plucking her fingers in her lap as though at strings. Finally she looked at him, those green eyes dead and resolute, and her lips pulled miserably at the corners, and she still didn't say a word though Aizawa silently begged her to.

"Paper Cut frightened you today," he said at last when nothing else came, leaning onto his knees.

Rin's voice was a painful rasp as she replied, "No." She cleared her throat. She shook her head. "No, he didn't."

"What did Nezu say to you?"

"We spoke about chess."

Aizawa narrowed his eyes, closed his hands into fists. "Rin."

"Shouta." The sound cracked with the threat of tears, and Aizawa pleaded within himself that she _would _cry – that she would be the one to lose her fragile grip of control and that she'd be weak enough to let him hold her. That he'd be able to hold her head to his chest and kiss her and never let her leave. But she didn't cry, sniffing back its potential as she lifted herself to sit straight. At least though, her eyes remained on his. "I wasn't going to wait. I wanted to be gone before you got back. But that–"

"Stop it."

She pulled a pained face, but resisted. "It wouldn't be fair on you. I need to explain ~ because everything Kizashi said–"

"Was lies."

"Is true."

They both scrutinized each other, he shaking his head in a feeble attempt to reject her words, she as carved and cold as a stained glass angel in snowy light. Aizawa noticed little things unnecessarily – that the dressing across her chest was gone, the stitches in her wound having dissolved to leave behind a bruise-purple line of scarring; that her hair was brushed behind both her ears but had begun to fall in relentless strands along her cheeks; that she wasn't plucking at her lip like she should have been despite how her fingers seemed to beg for movement.

"Before coming to stay with you in the dormitories, I went looking for Doctor Voodoo every night when you weren't here. It was harder with all your students around, and with you being so close, but I've still been doing it most nights during the week." She tapped the scarring down her chest. "Which is why my wound didn't heal properly. Which is how Yukio managed to find me, I think."

Aizawa should have suspected it, and in the big scheme of things he would only have been angry with her because she'd put herself in danger – beyond that, it wasn't exactly _wrong_. Aizawa said so. Elicited a struggling stare in return – despite his denial though, Rin continued.

In a bland, practiced monotone, she told him about how she'd manipulated most everyone at the Voodoo Agency for information – with basic psychology, with bribery, by other unspecified means. Kizashi most of all, though he still didn't realise it. She told him she hadn't once tried to reach out to anyone for help because Doctor Voodoo was mad but he was a genius and the whole thing had to be handled with the utmost care (where had he heard that before?). The other three who'd died were accidents she hadn't accounted for. They were good people. They wanted to help. And in the end, she'd gotten them killed because she was the one who got them involved.

And she promised herself not to get anyone else involved again.

But then Aizawa came along – and she'd panicked – and she didn't say no when the hospital staff told her he was going to help her out with her recovery – and then the moment she saw him that day at the hospital, she lost any resolve to say no at all. And she thought it would be fine. That it was all close enough to over for her to pretend that it had never happened at all, even if she only pretended for a little while. "But then we… it all went a lot further than I thought it would. You've always meant the world to me. Ever since leaving high school, I've regretted every decision that took me further and further away from you, and I just – I didn't think. I just stopped thinking."

All this time, Aizawa had wanted the truth. Now he was getting it, and he would have given everything in the world to have made Rin stop.

Unable to resist at last, she lifted a hand to her mouth and bit – hard – onto the tip of her index finger. Until she winced. Until her cheeks went red from the effort and sting. It shocked and thrilled Aizawa in a numb and dazed sort of way; and it was with something of relief that Rin lowered her hand again to say, gaze steady, "When I found out about Yukio ~ that he was at the Voodoo Agency, I mean ~ _I _asked him to take away your memories." A profound harshness about her words made Aizawa's gut turn in on itself. "You weren't supposed to remember me. _At all_. But then you arrived at the hospital–"

"But why the fuck wouldn't you want me to remember you?"

"Because…" She halted. Chewed on her tongue and dangled the silence before Aizawa.

He stood from his seat. "_Tell me_."

"Because I… soon before graduation, I told you I was scared. I told you there was something wrong at the Voodoo Agency and that I was scared ~ and you _swore _you'd keep me safe. That's exactly what I didn't want, Shouta. I messed up, and you couldn't get involved because–"

"Because everything has to be handled with," he air-quoted, "_the utmost care_? Is that it, Rin? Is that _all_?" He didn't mean to speak at her in such a hiss, with such disgust. It was the furthest thing from what he felt. But Aizawa's control over himself and the situation slipped, and in spite of himself he'd given Rin the upper hand.

Her features crinkled delicately. "No. That's… not all…"

"What else then?"

"You – no… we – I mean, after graduation ~ it all happened after graduation, but I didn't understand any of it and I was confused–"

"You're not making sense."

Apparently she'd said enough. Her eyes fluttered downwards to her lap, where her hands balled themselves tightly into fists – tense enough for the whites of her knuckles to glow luminously beneath her skin. A shudder seemed to run itself across her shoulders, fine and carved perfectly to the bone. The sight of it, the imagined feel of Rin's shivering frame beneath his hands, made everything inside of Aizawa do a dramatic dive. The very depths of his heart rocketed into his head.

A murmured something. Sickly sweet nothing. Rin returned her attention to Aizawa and let her lips part and close dumbly, her eyes' incandescence filled with shadowy apologies and confessions and darknesses. No words came. No more words. No more logic – she'd stopped thinking once again.

Though Aizawa's heart begged him to be gentle, he glared at her. Though every fiber of his being pulled him in her direction, aching and longing to please (oh God, _please_) hold her or touch her or kiss her or something to say that it was okay – they were okay, and there were parts of them to salvage and save out of all this mess of secrecy revealed – still his fingers quivered with a snaking indignation. "Are you finished talking?" he asked her, voice ominously soft.

She said nothing.

So he sighed. "Then leave."

And meekly, without the objection Aizawa waited so desperately for (please God, _please_!), Rin gripped her jersey in her hand and stood. Quiet. Beautiful and distant. She stopped for mere moments to keep her gaze on him – and he wished she wouldn't, because he could pinpoint the exact moment her heart broke in perfect unison with his – before tiptoeing across the living area. Away. Away from him without looking over her shoulder. Away to the door, where the two bags she'd brought stood ready to be taken. More murmurings, amongst which Aizawa managed to discern a shattered, "I am so sorry, Shouta."

Then, taking her things with an unnatural ease and grace, she left Aizawa alone in an empty apartment with a cold, stewing cup of coffee.

* * *

**A/N: Oww. My heart.**


	37. Dream's To Be Had

Chapter 37  
Dreams to be Had

It seeped, searing, along the walls of his skull in retribution. Puncturing. Piercing. Carving through him with a vengeance nauseating enough for tears to prickle in the corners of his eyes. White dots like amoebas dividing and merging beneath a microscope shimmered beneath the blackness of his closed lids – and even they, in their imaginary incandescence, burned through his brain's synapses with the same soldering brightness as the sun.

Aizawa didn't move. For a long time, he didn't move both out of fear and out of weakness – sapped by the turmoil in his head and heart; ruthlessly aware of the apartment's empty silence and the expanse of exposed bedsheet beside him. It hurt to breathe. Even the slightest twitch or twist in his neck delivered screaming agony into the base of his head. Obscure coordinates. Floating and inaccessible, immune to painkillers or coffee or the earlier desperation with which Aizawa had pressed his fingers into his eyes. He despaired. Passive and petrified, he'd been lying upon the bed for hours now. _Hours_. A lifetime.

And yet, it also seemed to him that only seconds had passed. He'd opened his palm and she, like the sand, had tumbled out from his grasp with the smooth grace of air. _Then leave_, and in hindsight he absolutely couldn't figure out why he'd said so. All along, he'd half-known the things Rin had told him; he'd suspected and shouldn't have been surprised, shouldn't have been angry. But the day, the last weeks, had all crashed down against him in that single, crucial moment and for the most evanescent second he had hated her with an exhausting, icy rationality. _Then leave_. And she'd left with nothing behind her. None of her clothes remained in the cupboards. None of her cooking was packaged and preserved in the fridge. Empty wine bottle in the bin.

Only a crystalline imprint: ghostly images of her floating before Aizawa's eyes as the headache had reared itself malevolently. He almost went after her. Almost rushed from his lonely place alongside the untouched cup of coffee on the table – to tell her what? To do what? Beg? He wasn't one to beg. But then he'd gone blind against the burning sensations and had groveled across the floor in an anguished search for the bedroom's coldness.

And in the darkness, in the chill which did nothing to soothe him as he writhed silently and motionlessly, Aizawa did his utmost to remember. Remember the things stolen from him – Rin in high school. And he _did _remember her, but in no new ways: shy and self-conscious, alone. Always alone. But now with a dream-like uncertainty, a false rendering, which Aizawa refused to accept. He counted days, looking for beginnings and endings in his consciousness. He analysed the vague, undetailed memories as one would analyse an old photograph.

All the while, the pain flared constantly. An abstract resistance seemed to pull at him – ever downwards into bloody blackness, the back of his head heavier than gold against the pillow and the ache battering at him in relentless, awful throbs. Each new beat seemed a single syllable. _Stop_. _Stop_. _Stop_. He tried to remember. _Stop. Stop. Stop_. He tried – and little things began to come to him: things of no significance which Aizawa agonized over laboriously and obsessively. _StopStopStop! _

She'd read a lot in high school. Aizawa remembered that.

She'd always worn her hair in a carelessly thrown ponytail, messier than the other girls' and very distracting in P.E. classes.

_Aizawa-sensei, is it true that grasshoppers have ears on their knees? Aizawa-sensei, why do cats only meow at humans and not at other cats? Aizawa-sensei, does it hurt for you to blink after not blinking for such a long time ~ like, do the insides of your lids feel like sandpaper over your eyes when you close them? Sorry, it's a random question ~ but I __**have to **__know. _Small, enchanting grin. Reading strange and endearing questions off of scrap pieces of paper – fading in and out, in and out repeatedly with the shifting, echoing quality of a badly done scene-change.

_StopStopStop!_

A claw to the top of his brain scraped at him, passionate and vindictive. Aizawa held his breath, feeling the pain dribble down into his chest like a potent medicine. It eased around his heart. It squeezed and poised itself with the hateful intention of a serpent – but still, oblivious to the hot path of a tear down his cheek, empty and unintended, Aizawa tried to remember. He thought for ages. He thought about her. Rin! There she was, staring out the classroom window in an absent dreaminess when she should have been paying attention; and then there she was, paying attention when nobody else bothered to. Skinny, white finger against her lip. Brow crinkled in thought. More bizarre, sometimes ominous, sometimes lovely questions – _How low can the average heart rate go before it becomes dangerous? What's the world record for most cats owned? Do you like ice-cream, Aizawa-sensei? I don't like ice-cream. _

She appeared and receded behind the hazy curtain of memory, luminous eyes of a younger, much younger girl. She wavered before him as though underwater, and the chime of innocent giggles was muffled against Aizawa's ears. He noticed the dramatic rise of a pulse, far-off at first, but then close – in his own chest; and he became aware that he was running. Running? _Running._

_Running as white walls passed him by, hazy in the corners of his eyes like fluttering sheets against a grey sky. He was going as fast as he could possibly bear. His feet pounded across tiled floor and released after themselves a clinical echo which bounced in repetitive softness before and behind him. Around the corners. Figures clad in green shuffled past, pausing to regard him though Aizawa took no notice of them. Blurs. Blurs of movement. Blurs of noise. He was breathing hard, and an unappetizing urgency – fright, panic – urged him onwards. Faster! Faster! _

_Around the corners. Hand on something smoothly cold before he could stop himself, and then he was through a door into greater brightness. Fluorescent lights. White sheets. And staring back at him, like a little ghost with purple circles around her eyes, was Rin. White hair. Dirty white cloud around her white face. Aizawa's head dipped and spun as he caught his breath, as he watched Rin's lips part into a hesitating smile. Something was off – he recognised the youthful awkwardness of her first year, fifteen, the meatless angularity and elfin oddity. A green tinge, glowing sickly. The smile vanished from her lips to be replaced by an awful horror – and then she jerked away from Aizawa as he stood in the mysterious doorway; jerked away and crumpled over and, with a dreadful retching, vomited into a bucket placed deftly against her lap. _

"_There, let it all out, dear." Recovery Girl? Recovery Girl was in the corner, tutting and shaking her head in that grandmotherly way. She glanced over Aizawa. Through the burning light, he could make out a fluctuating smile which wrinkled strangely at the corners. "Don't look so panicked, Eraser Head. She's going to be fine." _

_Deeper into the room, mysterious dread doing little to dissipate. Strong sting of puke's odour in his nose, a powerful overtone to the chemical perfumes. He went towards the bed, heart doing a vile spin about his chest, and eyed Rin's fragility beneath the thin layer of hospital gown. She twisted her head, made a pathetic crooning noise, and then sat once again to look innocently at Aizawa: so close and real, the familiarity striking enough to border on pain._

_He heard his voice, felt the stricken tremble in his throat. "What on earth did you do to yourself, Hiruma?" _

_She blinked at him, cocking her head from side to side in the playful way of a kitten. The knotty disaster of her hair flopped against her nape. "I ~ uh ~ I was just, you know – I was curious." _

"_About what?" _

_Curt little shrug. _

_There came the raspy sound of Recovery Girl clearing her throat. "This little madam was __**curious **__about how quickly she'd be able to detox certain medications from her blood…" A meaningful look at and through Aizawa, making his stomach clench. Once again with the quality of misty sheens, Recovery Girl's image faltered and seemed to disappear for a moment before solidifying gain. "She reacted badly to one of them. One of the medications, that is. Hence the vomiting."_

_What Aizawa said next came as an inaudible tumble of noise. His following movements were instinctive and made Rin's eyes go wide – made her push out her bottom lip like a sulky child, the shape of it plump and candy pink. As though having been lifted through water Aizawa's hands were at her cheeks, hot despite their lack of colour, and he held her gaze with his glare. Touching her. Gently. So gently she could easily have pulled back. But she didn't. Soft and white and with something close to fascination, she didn't move as Aizawa demanded, "Are you an idiot?" Shake of her head between his palms. "Why would you do something so stupid, Hiruma? Hmm? Were you alone?" _

_A pause. She stared at him, and nodded her head slowly. Recovery Girl said something in turn but Aizawa didn't hear, the sound of it thin and faraway. He didn't care to listen. Rin could have killed herself and nothing in the world seemed more important – Rin, his student; Rin, more than just a student; Rin, shimmering and pale enough to be translucent, unreal. Was she real? _

"_Where did you get the medications, Hiruma?" _

_She swallowed, seemingly on her words, and then gasped them out. "I… asked a doctor." She bit her lip. "I mean, I asked him to write me a prescription." _

"_You asked a doctor? Just like that?"_

"_Yes, Aizawa-sensei." _

"_Did you even think for a moment that you could have died?" _

_Such a suggestion – death? – must have seemed absurd to her. She blinked those eyes. Pursed those lips in a screwed, colorless pout as she considered the reality of it. Mindlessly and imperceptibly, taken up by the peculiarity of her her her, Aizawa made the faintest circles with his thumbs against her cheeks. Ivory-smooth. Burning white with warmth._

_At last, she said, "No, Aizawa-sensei. I didn't think." Shrinking, receding from him, the sensation filling Aizawa with an awe both terrible and euphoric. "I just wanted to see if I could do it." Her voice went small, straining, and when Aizawa looked away to Recovery Girl he was met only by an empty corner. _

_The hospital room warped, its white melting down into a pastel patterning Aizawa couldn't discern. An excess of light, yellower now and softer in its fluorescence, cast new forms of shadows across the space – more rows of beds, shrill noise like muffled chatter as little figures bopped about in the coloured sheets. There was a more sickly smell now, acrid like rotting berries, and Aizawa struggled to comprehend how he'd managed to return once again to the arch of the doorway. Rin was gone from him. Vanished. Just like that. For a long while he stood there, feeling unseen eyes fall upon him and then disappear again. Hoarse laugh, dying down soon after. A Cough. Sneeze. Aizawa stepped in and only managed to make out a boyish little voice from some unidentifiable source – "…but Mommy, these pajamas are itchy and I don't like..." _

_Aizawa held a teddy bear not much bigger than the size of his hand. Fluffy and white, pink bow tied around the neck as the beady black eyes glinted up at him. Slow, muted tap of his feet along the shiningly polished floor as he meandered down the length of the room. One bed. Two beds. Four. Floating past and melting away behind him. All the way to the end of the room, where a window overlooked a scape washed by blinding white. She was there, in the very last bed – her! Fiddling distractedly with a long stretch of bandage as it hung in loose, uncooperative folds around her neck like a scarf. _

_Her, but younger. Much younger. Aizawa heard himself say her name as he wandered ever towards the bed – throwing the bear from one hand to the other, ignoring the surrounding daze – and she looked up, and his heart swelled to feel the affectionate embrace of her gaze upon him. She looked up and smiled wider than Aizawa had ever seen anyone ever smile at him, the blackness of her eye's bruise shimmering dramatically against her childish pallour: porcelain with the blossomy blush over her cheeks, her nose; a sharp contrast to the sick swirls of purple and blue darkness. Three stitches in her cheek. A clean puff of hair around the soft, dewy features lacking in any of the familiar angles. Sweet. Beautiful as an angel haloed by the light. _

"_Eraser Head-san!" Her voice echoed with bell-like tenderness, as though they were under glass. Still clutching the ends of the bandages, little Rin wiggled out from under the sheet and flung her legs over the edge of the bed. "You're here~" her smile widened. "You came!"_

"_So I did." Under the pressure of her animated, slightly gapped-toothed grin, Aizawa felt his own lips' corners go upwards. He seated himself on the edge of the empty bed next to her, holding out the white bear. "This is for you."_

"_It's cute!" _

"_I'm glad you think so." Before this, at the toy store (when had he gone to the toy store? Was he dreaming?), he had debated between the teddy bear and a puppy plushy. But then he'd remembered she didn't like dogs. And as Rin grasped the teddy – such little hands! Bruises seeming to float across the knuckles in vanishing purples – her sudden steeliness, a certain fuzzy dismay hidden beneath the darling mask, made Aizawa wish he'd gotten her some other toy entirely. "Do you not like it, Rin-chan?" _

_Crinkling her nose, pursing her lips, she balanced the bear in her lap. "My dad used to give me lots of teddies."_

"_Where is your dad now?"_

_A lengthy silence – Aizawa thought perhaps she'd frozen, and he'd frozen, that a chasm had opened up through which they could neither hear nor see each other any longer. But after a moment's deliberation, Rin lifted a tiny finger and tapped the bear's heart-shaped nose. "Don't know," she said. _

_And though Aizawa knew this, it struck through him anew with a vigour both fresh and intense as though he were hearing it for the first time. "Are there other types of toys you like?"_

_Now she touched her finger to her own mouth. The hum which rose from her throat in breezy quietness reverberated through the entirety of Aizawa's bones. "Books." _

"_And do they have nice books here for you to read?"_

"_Not really~" she shrugged and, with the bear sitting comfortably in the folds of her grey pajama-dress, began to fidget once again with the bandage slung over her shoulders. "There are lots of books, but they're all boring and kind of dumb. Yukio-chan likes all of them a lot though, so sometimes I'll read for him when he can't sleep." Rin blinked at Aizawa, tilted her head in that way she had. "You're sitting on Yukio-chan's bed now. I don't know where he's gone." _

_Aizawa tilted his head right back at her. "I'm sure Yukio-chan won't mind if I sit on his bed for a little bit while I visit you." _

"_Will you leave when Yukio-chan comes back?" _

"_Possibly."_

"_But you'll definitely come back again?" _

_Somewhere in the distance, an odd buzz simmered upon the air. The ends of the room began to twist strangely, silvery and wrong. Though Aizawa noticed it, he paid no heed – only lifting his hand, touching the tip of his finger to Rin's sylphishly curving nose with a foreign, uncharacteristic affection. "I'll come as much as I can." The hum got louder, deafeningly so but failing to reach Aizawa's consciousness. The rows of beds fell away. Rin's own began to dissolve, dipping deeper into fading obscurity – but neither of them noticed, and little Rin smiled again with satisfied delight. A child. And then a teenager, disappearing behind a blackening curtain. And then–_

There was darkness. Deathly silence. Aizawa's eyes drifted open lethargically to be greeted by shapes unrecognizable and blobby in their shadowings. A buzzing. It seemed to shake him to his very core, like bees in his chest – but from whence it came, it was hard to say. Wiping his hand across his forehead, surprised through his daze by the thin webbing of sweat upon his skin, he groaned. Sighed. Inched himself slowly upwards to sit.

The headache had disappeared, retreating like a sated predator into the depths of its hide. Aizawa remained hunched over upon the bed, still only vaguely aware of the disconcerting vibrations, rhythmic and frequent – under the bed. It was coming from under the bed, and Aizawa placed his still-socked feet onto the floor with no particular urgency. Bending down, stiff from his anxious state of rigor mortis, the change of position was both painful and exhilarating, pins and needles scurrying down the length of his spine in a lightning hot excitement.

Blue light illuminated the underside of the bedframe, a cellphone jolting itself to life with each buzz. A ring. A phonecall – Rin's cellphone, the shape of which sent sheer tremors of misery through Aizawa's body. Still with the sense that he was dreaming while also lucid enough to feel himself curl over inwardly with disdain – had she dropped it in her rush to leave? Forgotten it? Left it purposefully behind to thrill and torture? – he reached out to take the phone.

Her Grandmother was calling.


	38. Loaded Knick-Knacks (I)

Chapter 38  
Loaded Knick-Knacks (I)

When Aizawa answered the phone, his greeting gruff and unwelcoming in its shortness, there was only the feeble silence of static in return. He hadn't happened to glance over the time. However, no signs of light oozed through the bedroom curtains and no noise in the form of prattling or traffic rung itself from outside the apartment. Late into the night? Early Sunday morning? Aizawa's body sank in upon itself, ready to fall back into the isolated comfort of sleep; but at last, there appeared a voice on the other end and Aizawa was jolted into awareness once again.

'_Aizawa-sensei-san!_' Whether surprised or distraught or excited, it was hard to say. '_Oh! How good to have you on the phone! It's Rin's grandmother.'_

It had only been hours, but the sound of her name – single syllable, fold and flatten of the tongue, the movement of it daring and heartbreaking against the bedroom's empty hush – made Aizawa ache as though she'd been gone for days now. "Hello Sasaki-san," he said, voice harshly flat. "I'm sorry to be so blunt, but if you're looking for Rin–"

'_Actually_!' Rin's grandmother cried, '_I only wanted to tell her good morning ~ she's never slept too well and can be rather grumpy in the early hours. I try to cheer her up where I can! Though she's been very spry the last few weeks whenever I've called…_' Something like a hum resonated over the line. Before Aizawa could interrupt her – not that he entirely wanted to, for the recognisably airheaded chatter was irresistible while also being gut-wrenching – she continued with more focused vigour, '_Oh! Listen to me. I'm babbling! I __**was **__looking for Rin, but I've actually been hoping to speak with you for some time now, Aizawa-sensei-san._'

"Me?" Despite his lethargy, his miserable detachment, Aizawa's voice quavered in uncertainty, "What about?"

A disturbance on the other end inspired a muffled series of somethings. A heavy drop. A gravelly murmur, followed by Rin's grandmother's own whispers from which Aizawa could just make out '_No, no, my dearest. It's still dark out_' and '_Put your slippers back on, darling.' _Then with more clarity, back into the speaker once again, she said, '_I wanted to ask for an honest answer about Rin ~ you must know how she is, she never wants to worry anybody with anything…' _Oh, how badly Aizawa wished he didn't know it. That he didn't know it with enough vivid intimacy to writhe at the very thought. '_But she does worry me. Sometimes I wonder about all this hero work she's been doing ~ she's a little too clever for her own good, and doesn't really have a heart for big, bad things._' A meaningful pause, and then a distant thought spoken aloud, '_Her mother was just the same._'

Aizawa just about winced, making an attempt to interrupt, "Sasaki-san–"

But Rin's grandmother cut him short, '_Anyway! If there was anyone in this world Rin would talk to, it would be you._' Aizawa could have screamed, could have pounded his head into the wall for all the spontaneous welling of frustration. '_And since Rin's still staying with you ~ she told me her wound hasn't been healing properly, that silly girl ~ anyway, since she's still staying with you I thought perhaps you'd be able to tell me if… well, if she's okay.' _

There were any number of things Aizawa could have told Sasaki Akane – that Rin was far from okay and he was far from okay and he had never in his life put up with so much shit from another person for the simple reason that they were beautiful in an inexplicable multitude of ways and that, with the entirety of his being, he wanted nothing more than to forget anything had ever happened between them. But he'd already forgotten once, apparently, and along that same vein he couldn't bear the thought that he'd lost her before and would lose her again. Again. Rin! Why would she do all of this only to run away? Why did he allow her to do so?

All too grossly convoluted and illogical, Aizawa could find no words to answer Rin's grandmother with. The cellphone burned against his ear, demanding conversation. His self-loathing and disgrace – if only he'd just been rational from the start, if he'd only done what he always did and had not allowed his heart to best him at whatever game they'd decided to play – squeezed at him from the inside out. He fought down the bile in his throat. He felt something inside of himself die and rot and bloom and die again.

The other end of the line rattled and scrunched, the sound like dry leaves being crushed. Rin's grandmother said softly, '_Aizawa-sensei-san?_ _Did…_' She paused for breath, perhaps considering her words. '_Is Rin alright? Is she there?_'

"Sasaki-san," Aizawa muttered, curling over himself as though he were wilting. He pressed one hand to his forehead, elbow leaning upon his knee. "I need to ask you something."

No reply.

"A while ago, when you and I first spoke over the phone, you said something – you said I brought Rin back to you." It sent a chilly wave of nausea, a terrible foreboding, up Aizawa's spine. Over the phone, he heard Rin's grandmother make a thoughtful noise and, affirmed, he pressed onwards, "What did you mean by that?"

'_Uh–_' Sasaki Akane seemed to hesitate, and Aizawa almost couldn't stomach the weight of the silence that followed. Even in its shortness, no more than some seconds, he cringed inwardly any number of times. As though in shame. As though in pain. '_Give me a moment._' A moment passed. In it, Aizawa could make out more murmurs and rustlings – '_Don't worry, my love. No, don't get up. I'll only be a minute, you don't have to come with me_' – and then a dull thump like a door being closed. With a slightly echoing quality, perhaps because she was standing in a bathroom, Rin's grandmother spoke with a thrown quietness, '_Aizawa-san?_'

"Yes," he grunted, the hairs on his neck pricking upwards. "I'm still here."

'_Don't you remember what happened?_'

"There are a lot of things I don't remember, Sasaki-san," Aizawa said. "Now's not the time for me to explain that though." For the simple reason that he couldn't – wrapping his head around the whole thing still caused him sheer agony – and even if he could explain, he didn't want to.

Rin's grandmother offered nothing in the way of words for a short while, only sighing over the line. Then slowly, gnawing on the answer before offering it up, she said, '_They gave the whole thing some silly name. The something-something case, I can't remember exactly ~ but there were apparently ten to twenty children just… locked up in some warehouse outside Tokyo… Surely you must remember that?' _

Aizawa wanted desperately to say yes. But he said nothing at all. Not so much as the slightest sound.

'_The police said the children were going to be shipped off,_' Rin's grandmother continued with a certain resignation. '_It was too awful. How anyone could do that to children… I couldn't understand it. And Rin! She'd run away. Oh god, it took months before she told us why. That her mother–' _A sharp pause, followed by a whimper. Aizawa listened guiltily as the woman drew a ragged breath, willing her to continue despite the effects. '_She said a man plucked her off from the street, promised food and somewhere warm for her to stay. But then – well, yes…' _

"How was I involved in any of this?"

'_Are you quite sure you don't remember, Aizawa-san? Rin said–'_

"I'm quite sure."

Aizawa imagined her biting her lip, or tapping her fingers agitatedly as Rin would do. Sasaki Akane heaved another breath, the labored quality making Aizawa feel selfish and embarrassed – but still he did nothing to emancipate the woman, waiting expectantly for her answers though he was unprepared for them when they did at last come. '_You rescued her. Rin. And the other children. You and the man she works for now._'

"Doctor Voodoo," Aizawa clarified, only just managing to maintain the reserve in his voice while a dreadful darkness welled within his chest.

'_Yes_,' Rin's grandmother said cautiously. '_I never did like the sound of him though. Rin didn't say so, but I'm certain she didn't want to take that job at his agency ~ she felt obliged, I'm sure. Trapped even, after all the attention he paid her while she was in high school._' Aizawa swore he heard her scoff. '_And then there was that other young man… Oh, what was his name again? Something with a K? He was there too, at the warehouse-rescue. And when she got older he wouldn't leave her alone, was always sending bouquets of paper flowers and origami and the like when she came home during the holidays. It was charming, in a way, but Rin's grandfather said from the start he was questionable. After all, he was a good eleven or twelve years older than her. Men like that should have no business wooing high school girls ~ but Rin liked him, and that girl just doesn't know how to say no…_'

It left Aizawa miserably dizzy and ill. Nothing came as a surprise anymore, but instead hammered into him with destructive intention. Indeed, he remembered working with Doctor Voodoo in his days as a debuting hero, but the memory was abstract and left itself largely unacknowledged in the back of Aizawa's mind. Now too, there was Paper Cut. Kizashi – with his supposed paper flowers and origami and venom. Fucking Paper Cut. What sort of snaking influence did he have over Rin in high school? What sort of things had happened right under Aizawa's nose? He couldn't stand to hear anything else. But he needed to know more, needed to make sense of the questions that knifed him.

"Did Rin ever mention having nightmares?"

'_Well, not to us_,' Sasaki Akane admitted. '_But soon before Satsu… Before her mother died... She, Satsu, my daughter, would sometimes call us in the middle of the night to say Rin was screaming in her sleep. She refused to allow Rin to come stay with us even though that household was no place for a little girl.'_

"Do you know what sort of things were making her so upset?"

'_Besides everything going on with her mother… dogs, apparently. She dreamed a lot about dogs barking at her._' Worked up, Rin's grandmother cleared her throat. '_We got her a kitten when she came to stay with us after everything ~ pet therapy, supposedly. She'd never go to sleep without having Blink on the bed with her, and it apparently did help._' Suddenly perking up, Aizawa was surprised to hear Sasaki Akane giggle. The youthful, pastel giggle so familiar. '_She said she named that cat after you. For a long time, Eraser Head was the only thing we ever heard about. Eraser Head says this and Eraser Head did that._'

"I…" Aizawa's heart rose into his head and fell again into the depths of his stomach. "I see." What had Eraser Head said to that little girl? What had he done? All of this. All of this knotted poetry. What sorts of things had lead to it? Coiling ever deeper into himself, Aizawa dreaded the pain that was certain to arrive at any moment. More than that, he resisted the desire to scream as a long-forgotten tension throbbed around his throat. It was an aching he hadn't felt since Shirakumo. Something he had hoped to never feel again – but now Rin was gone and there were no answers to be had and, quite unfathomably, Aizawa was almost sure he'd lost an entire piece of his soul.

Just what sorts of things had the past versions of him felt for the past versions of Rin?

'_Aizawa-san?_'

"Mmm?"

'_Has something happened?_' So much. Too much. '_To our granddaughter, I mean?'_

Aizawa didn't know what sort of answer to give, but to say nothing seemed cruel in grotesque proportions. Like leaving an arrow, whose tip was poisoned and splintering, in the wound. So in spite of himself, in spite of his almost callous honesty, he sighed and said with trained but strained distance, "Rin's fine. She's still sleeping." Fuck, it hurt. "I'll tell her you called." It was going to hurt even more when Rin never called back.

Not sounding convinced, her grandmother cooed, '_Oh ~ oh, alright. Please do tell her that her grandfather and old Blink say hello too! And that we love her.'_

"I will."

'_Thank you, Aizawa-sensei-san._'

"Shouta."

A surprised hush. '_Pardon me?_'

And then Aizawa hung up, dropping the phone next to himself upon the bed and leaning both elbows onto his knees. Burying his face into his palms, not fully aware of the scratch of stubble nor the hot, draining wetness down his cheeks. It hurt. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. It hurt to miss Rin like he was missing organs – indeed, everything inside of him seemed to tumble in an uncontrollable confusion, and no amount of rationality would help him now.

Sasaki Akane had told him enough and nothing. Her words replayed themselves in a jumbled haze at the back of his mind, fading out into a sick montage of colour and burning images: _the something-something incident_, in all its unknowable singularity,and paper flowers with blood-tipped edges, and dogs hunting down a little girl with bare feet and white hair, and Blink the cat. Blink the cat, somehow named after Aizawa. It should all have meant something more to him than simply being a collection of excruciatingly loaded knick-knacks. Memorabilia from a past-life not his own. What had Rin done to him? Why had she made it so easy for these things to slip from his grasp?

They were right there, poised upon knife's edge at the very edge of his mind. Poised, and guarded well by a maniacal quirk – but waiting, waiting to fall back into place.

The grounded, more level-headed side of Aizawa demanded that he stand and do _something_. Absolutely anything to get the truth. And weakly, he did stand; he did shuffle out from the bedroom's stifling stillness to look for his car keys and lock-picking tools. However, the other half of him, the part fattened and dazed by the disaster of his feelings for Rin, made his limbs drag. Made him weak with the few memories he did have of her – the taste of red wine that night they'd first kissed, and her doodles on his mark schemes, and the sweet yelps of irritation when she'd ditzily walked into furniture. Moments of nothing. Things that meant everything.

* * *

**A/N: MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY! xxx**


	39. Loaded Knick-Knacks (II)

Chapter 39  
Loaded Knick-Knacks (II)

The light outside had warmed from black to lavender blues and from that to a weakly glow of yellow, though still with darkness enough for Aizawa to have lock-picked his way into Rin's apartment (or was it her former apartment?) without attracting the prying eyes of her neighbours (former neighbours).

Now he stood amongst neatly stacked piles of books and paper, a stark contrast to the disaster he'd walked in upon weeks ago. It occurred to Aizawa vaguely and without any particular urgency that Rin must have been coming to her apartment in the dead of night to reorganize her belongings – to return some sense of formless order to whatever pattern she'd established for herself in this chaotic, sacred space. Perhaps also to salvage whatever evidence she may have had against Doctor Voodoo and his cronies.

Houseplants had been rescued from the previous destruction, amassed upon the small dining room table in wine glasses and mugs and cereal bowls. Their broken pots had been thrown into a dustbin bag against the wall, along with shards of glass from shattered picture frames and any number of crumpled, shredded or folded papers. The walls remained bare. No dishes waited in the kitchen sink. And in the bedroom, over which Aizawa cast his eyes from the invisible boundary of the doorway, the two large bags Rin had left with were thrown across the bed. Unopened, forcing a limp disappointment upon Aizawa as he realised that she'd been there and he'd missed her by mere hours. Not to say he'd expected to find her; however, some hopeless hope drove the realization that she'd likely still come back.

She'd changed the bedsheets so that no hint of the bloodied handprints remained. Had they been Paper Cut's? A fresh ire swelled between Aizawa's temples; only, exhaustion prevented him from being anything but dour and detached as he drifted deeper into Rin's bedroom. He eyed the scattering of things he hadn't noticed before: dying orchid on the bedside table, an antique dressing table wedged around the corner. Perfumes and the odd pair of sneakers or heels, a well-frequented stack of books, still more papers.

Things which, had Rin stayed, she and Aizawa would have made occasion to bring to his apartment.

He allowed himself the indulgence of imagining it, half-sick upon the poisonous sweetness of such domestic imagery – her houseplants, in their fleshy freshness, filling the vacancies along his shelves; her papers lying across his tables and chairs; even something as stupid and quaint as her shoes next to his. She'd make meals from her multitude of cook books; he'd put away her clothing as it spilled from cupboard to furniture to floor. They'd come home together after late nights of hero work, chugging down coffee and watching the news and then falling into the same bed, the same ruffled sheets smelling warmly of both her and of him. Villains to catch. Bills to pay. Papers to mark. Aizawa doing exactly the same thing he'd always done but now with her to do it alongside.

Only in hindsight did it all seem so tremendously stupid, and only in hindsight did Aizawa realise that he and Rin both shared a terrible fault: they'd _both_ pretended, had _both_ allowed themselves to slip into a lulling routine of romantic comforts even in the face of impending disaster. Aizawa had been privy to the situation's unnaturalness from the start. Yet, he'd remained blissfully and quite decidedly lackadaisical and had relished Rin's charms, drinking upon her cat-like nature to pad about and ignore the rest of the world while also being comfortable enough to curl up to him in little, quiet moments of affection. He'd played house, as Paper Cut (fuck him) had said.

And now his mind – the stewing origin of his rationality and resentment – screamed against him. Demanding and pleading that he not fall under the same spell once more. However, every other part of him – body, heart and soul: those which, before Rin, had been mostly silent but had now assumed a pivotal role in all Aizawa's decisions concerning her – pulled in an entirely opposite direction. Given the choice, Aizawa was certain he'd do it all again. He'd be hers, if she asked. Even if he didn't want to feel anything, she gave him a pulse and there'd be no forgetting that.

But he wasn't trespassing simply for the sake of maudlin pining.

Resisting the gross sense that he was violating a delicately established trust – what supposed _trust_, he couldn't say, for it was clear Rin had done just about everything _but trust him_ – Aizawa began an aimless search of her room. He didn't know exactly what for: only that he needed answers in their simplest, most unambiguous form. Memories.

He started with the photo frames dotted in mismatched zig-zags across her dressing table, picking up and deliberating and putting down. Photos with an incandescent, foggy quality. Several different Rins, at several different ages, each one a fresh pain. In one she was graduating from UA, unnecessarily beautiful as she smiled thinly between pink smudges of early blooming sakura. In another, she cradled a black kitten against her chest. And in another, she and a second child clutched each other in a clumsy, excitable hug as though they'd just been wrestling. Aizawa tried to place the second child, recognizing in the slanted features and unhealthy smallness something sick and familiar. He stared hard and for a good deal of time at the wide eyes, the curling mass of pale hair, before realising with a certain dismay that the second child was Yukio.

There were many more photos of Rin with a man – who stared grumpily at the camera with a face like a crinkled landscape of pallor and elfin features; features which, despite the wrinkled and ashen quality of decay, gave the man an eternally mischievous air and bore a gorgeous, near-fantastical resemblance to Rin – and a woman – silvery hair cropped short around her soft, tired face; glowing eyes, luminescent in their feline yellowness and a charmed, unfocused smile; a woman who must have been pretty in her day, and was still pretty enough through a nostalgic sort of daze, but was unfairly marred by unease and age. Aizawa took these photos from their frames, often times finding the backs of the pictures dated in a stylish, overly-neat handwriting. _Rin with Granny and Grandpa. With love. _At these, Aizawa gazed intently, bringing the images close to his face as he attempted to pick out the subtle nuances of genetics.

Then there was one – singular and lonely, hidden in a distinct angling away from all the others – of Rin as a toddler. Plump, pale, tremendously cute as she reached for whomever stood behind the camera with crocodile tears streaming from the corners of her eyes. And alongside her was a woman, laughing delightedly with her hand balanced behind baby Rin's back. It shocked Aizawa. Shocked and stirred him, and inspired the urge to throw the photo across the room in a mix of disgust and awe. Rin's mother! Not the emaciated, drug-dashed witch he'd imagined but an exquisite future-form of Rin herself. Despite having a baby, she couldn't have been much older than twenty two or three, and was haloed by light like an angel from a daydream. A healthy glow. An inviting tenderness. She was lounged across a picnic blanket with a large red flower pressed deftly behind her ear, and she looked to be so painfully in love with Rin it was hard for Aizawa to stomach it.

He turned the photograph back to its initial position. Facing away, excluded like a disease from the rest of the frames.

Nothing jumped out at him from inside the dressing table drawers. Besides a few pretty dresses and a very bland, black, oversized Eraser Head t-shirt (where Rin could have gotten that, Aizawa dared not think of it), nothing important was to be found in the cupboards either. The bedside tables were empty. The bags on the bed, which Aizawa had pried open with more expert lock-picking, presented him with nothing new – only an echoing scent upon the jerseys, traces of Rin's fingers in the pages of her books. The bathroom – nothing. Underneath the furniture in the living area – nothing.

And after hours of scouring the stacks of disembodied papers, he'd only managed to find a handful of Rin's old school reports and some news articles. On missing children. On the quirk-enhancing drug. The like. Aizawa folded these into his pockets, sighing, and trudged through to the kitchen where the fridge was empty and the cupboards contained only rice cakes and iron supplements and coffee. He poured himself water from the tap; boiled the kettle. From the cabinet containing Rin's unholy multitude of mugs – ones with cats painted on, their tails the handle; ones with flowers or stars; ones in pastel pinks – Aizawa took the largest one he could find. Which, lo and behold, revealed the corner of a box wedged into the back corner of the cabinet.

A hidden stash of snacks, perhaps. Or small kitchen gadgets Rin cared nothing for. As Aizawa hesitantly pushed the other mugs out the way, the _clink clink clink _of their ceramic bodies somehow driving a harsh grimace through his core, he worked against getting his hopes up. The box was curiously light as he took it. Something of a trinket box, wooden and little bigger than the size of his outstretched hand – certainly too small for food or gadgets, and with no need for lock-picking either. Leaned against the counter, loosely aware of his body's impending stiffness, Aizawa twisted the box before his eyes for some moments as though in search of hidden messages or booby traps. All seemed perfectly innocent. Aizawa flicked open the lid and found – much to his disappointment, making him groan to no one with the looming threat of anticlimax – a newspaper clipping.

Folded with the utmost care to be nestled comfortably between the box's wooden walls.

Looking thin and worn and well-read in its crinkled quality.

Over this Aizawa was in two minds, first of all attempting to remain convinced that he'd searched the apartment fairly exhaustively (indeed, he'd looked in the tank of the toilet and had unsuccessfully attempted to pull out the cornices from the walls) and that there was in fact _not _an all-elusive little gem of information to be found.

Especially not in a place so dreadfully ill-concealed.

However, his fingers seemed to burn as he plucked the clipping from its place; he could do nothing to restrain his hands' faint quiver as he set the box aside on the kitchen counter behind him.

The paper was significant. His heart and soul were sure of it. And when he unfolded the page to its full size, chest squeezing in upon itself with ever greater tightness, his head spun with much too much anticipation for him to immediately absorb the implications of the cropped article's heading. Aizawa shut his eyes, overwhelmed by the sheer immensity of his exhaustion and frustration, and drew a ragged breath. The sensation was almost excruciating – until then, his breaths had been shallow, agitated and ineffective – and he cringed at the inkling threat of the headache. But nothing came. He opened his eyes.

He opened his eyes and was confronted, initially with disbelief and then with piercing realization, by a picture of himself.

Black and white, blurred by movement and nighttime darkness but still distinctive enough for Aizawa to recognise the moody displeasure of his youth. Different from his current moody displeasure only on account of the recognisably less tired look. He glared at the camera, seemed to be raising his hand from the corner of the page as though to shoo the photographer away. Blaring lights, torches or police cars, shimmered in the background behind blobs of bodies. _Pictured – Debuting Erasure Hero: Eraser Head (not available for comment)_. Beneath which was the article's heading, written in imposing bold and italics–

_Fourteen Children Rescued_

* * *

Throughout the rest of the week, Aizawa spent his free time scouring the article; in time that wasn't his free time, he occupied his mind with thoughts of the article; and late at night, the dormitories quiet and devastatingly hollow without Rin, he writhed against the predatory torture of the headache as it reared itself and reared itself and reared itself. Images came to him during the day, obtrusively and obsessively – hazy faces; a clear vision of being flanked by shadowed, cold walls which faded into obscurity and back into focus and then out again; a smear of white, with high definition focus upon details like the corner of a mouth or a dirty toe, a bell-toned word or a tantalizing pressure in the palm of Aizawa's hand. Nothing that made any real sense, but which dazed Aizawa and made him fall noticeably silent at odd times.

The article was strangely short for such an important thing as fourteen children being rescued from a trafficking ring. The details were there but happened also to be brief and easy to glaze over – Tokyo warehouse; some minor injuries on the part of the children, one of the traffickers dead from unknown causes; none of the heroes involved in the rescue being available for comment. Not one, with only the _Debuting Erasure Hero: Eraser Head _being mentioned alongside a transitory allusion to a _well-known underground agency_.

Aizawa searched the internet and came across no more information on the incident, though a vast variety of news sites covered the story with the same detached conciseness.

He also expanded his search to the Voodoo Agency and found nothing he didn't know. There were listings of missions Doctor Voodoo and his sidekicks had headed or been involved in, but looking up the names and dates and places turned out close to nothing, as though not a single person in the world had cared to follow up on the events. A photograph was rare. Commentary from anyone at the Voodoo Agency – let alone Doctor Voodoo himself – was even rarer, and Aizawa quickly abandoned any attempts to discover whatever it was he'd hoped to find. All of them, those murky figures, were little more than ghosts. Myths. Illusions, known only by name and by well made-up faces.

Quietly, Aizawa damned his younger self for having _not been available for comment _that night long ago, because perhaps if he'd said something – any goddamn thing at all – there'd be more for him to remember from.

And through it all, despite the aching tragedy of his disturbance and literal pain, despite the incorrigible desire to see her, Aizawa didn't once risk the heartache of going to Rin herself. Unsurprisingly, she didn't return to the dormitories, and though it distressed Class 2A greatly – "But she promised to cook us something Italian this week!" and "Is she going to stay with one of the other classes? _Did 2B steal her from us_!?" – Aizawa made no effort to explain her absence and managed with a certain amount of subtlety to make it clear to his students that he didn't want to explain.

On the Monday, in a moment of beguiled weakness, he did venture past her office. Closed door. The faint murmur of her voice behind it. In the empty hallway, aware of but choosing to ignore the possibility of being caught by an innocent passerby, Aizawa had slumped himself against the wall and listened for an agonizing number of minutes to her speaking. Sometimes managing to make out words, other times not, enraged whenever she was interrupted by the second person in the room (a boy, it seemed, one with a familiar voice which Aizawa had no energy to place). No matter the audibility though, he was indubitably shaken by the typical bubbliness in her speech, its vibrancy wholly without the dragging melancholy Aizawa himself felt. He rotted inside at the sound. He ran his hand over his face and sighed into his palm.

He didn't once try to put himself through that same torment again, though she - Rin! - was the first thing he thought about every morning and the last thing to cross his mind through his painkiller-fueled daze at night. Was she back at her apartment, oblivious to the way he'd scavenged through it only days before? How long had it been since she'd left him – forty nine hours? Seventy eight? Did it hurt her to think of it all quite as much as it hurt him? These things and more, like pins piercing swiftly through Aizawa's mind with a numb, impersonal vengeance.

For the most part throughout the rest of the week, he managed to avoid her with a fair amount of dignity. He sidestepped certain corridors, was sure to check for her presence in the teachers' lounge or offices before entering. He didn't once have to outrightly face the catastrophe of his feelings. All along, Aizawa flattered himself by thinking that it was by his care and logic that he didn't see her again, that he had grasped a certain control over their situation and it was only a matter of time before – before what? Before he forgot about her again? Like hell. But at least he had managed to swallow down the general sadness that swirled inside of him.

However, it was made clear soon enough that it was by no doing of his own that he'd been able to maintain such a distant façade. It was no show of skill that kept him apart from Rin, no deliberate attempts that kept him safe from her charms. Because really, he should at least have _seen _her by now and should at least have had some sort of close run-in that would have left him reeling and breathless from the exposure. But there'd been none of that – there'd been no danger to Aizawa whatsoever because by the end of the week she was gone. Rin, in all her elusive loveliness, was no longer there to be avoided.

* * *

**A/N: Until now, we've been going in circles - however, you needn't wait any longer, because in the next few chapters we will be reaching the pinnacle (and the end?) of this story. For now though, keeping reviewing to let me know what you think! ^-^ Thankie. **


	40. The Run

Chapter 40  
The Run

As it turned out, she'd been gone since Monday morning.

The glimpse of her voice through the office doorway – the indulgence of which Aizawa told no one about, though the thought of it burned him often – was perhaps the last anyone at the school had heard of Rin: transitory remains in the form of muttered goodbyes, frail and fleeting as the hints of her continued to disintegrate. It shouldn't have come as such a shock; on the contrary, Aizawa should have stomached it with a composed certainty and resolve. It was what he'd expected all along, after all. For her to disappear. Sand through his hands.

However, when Yamada confronted him one afternoon later in the week, looking uncharacteristically dire in his concern, the news of it crashed through Aizawa with the same shrill quality of shattering glass.

"You've been mega out of sorts, man. What's up?" Yamada had questioned with an odd note of sensitivity – unusual for him, with his bad habit of avoiding unpleasant subjects – leaning in as his voice lowered itself by a considerable number of decibels. "Something happen with Hiruma-chan?"

Doing his best to feign indifference, Aizawa had replied, "Nothing for you to be concerned about."

"Where has she disappeared to?"

By this, he had been little more than taken aback – though he didn't recall ever telling Yamada specifically that Rin had come to live with him, Aizawa half-expected the other man to be asking about the matter of their newly changed living arrangements. Word was sure to spread sooner or later (admittedly though, it did seem a little too soon for others to be finding out, given Rin's spectacular ability for keeping things to herself as well as his own silence on the matter). Aizawa, managing less to keep the discomfiture from his voice as he scrolled absent-mindedly down his computer screen, had quavered in response, "What do you mean?"

To which Yamada had pulled an incredulous face. "Well, y'know…" Suddenly seeming reluctant to pursue the conversation despite it's only having just begun. "I heard it from Kayama and figured you'd know more about it. With how quiet you've been and all – I thought you'd be missing her. Hiruma-chan, I mean."

"Heard what?"

An exaggerated shrug. Yamada had looked away, apparently no longer speaking to Aizawa specifically but instead to the unseen listeners around them. "I haven't seen her around, is all. Apparently she hasn't come back to the school since Monday."

* * *

Without further ado, Aizawa's frail attempts at avoidance were brutalized. He stumbled past Rin's office before his next class. The door was locked. No sound came from inside – and like a burly, black cloud of smoke against the sky, a hollowness descended upon the entirety of the corridor. Aizawa despaired silently within himself, wanting nothing more than to find his sleeping bag and a dark corner. For as long as the hour would allow, he paced the hallway in wait. For her. For a student who didn't know her door had closed upon them. Upon _both_ of them. However, neither she nor an unfortunate passerby came.

And rocked as he was by such an inconvenient tragedy, sullen and brooding, Aizawa found himself able to do little more than grumble through 2A's Heroics lesson as it ticked by in unbearable slowness. Gazing hard at nothing, saying little in a state of irritability uncharacteristic even for him. Evading All Might's beady looks of care, of general understanding and unwelcome warmth. Did All Might also know she was gone? How she'd slipped from Aizawa's fingers without even the courtesy of letting him stop her?

Did Nezu know?

Of course. _Of course _Nezu would know.

It was with a festering resentment that Aizawa realised and stewed upon this, his antipathy simultaneously rational in its simplicity – for indeed, was it not Nezu to whom Aizawa had gone first? Was it not Nezu who'd claimed to understand, intimately, the danger of the whole thing? – while also being absurd in its zeal. In its jealousy. That the principal should be privy to the sort of things Aizawa hadn't been able to coax from Rin himself seemed… miserably unfair… and the thought of it acted with a venom both lulling and destructive. Principal Nezu would have known why Rin had left, if it was not he himself who'd made her do so. He would have known, just as he'd known all the sorts of things Aizawa hadn't when Rin had been his student.

Though the more level-headed arena of his mind realised he was likely to be embellishing – that really, Nezu was probably no more welcome in Rin's innermost workings than Aizawa himself was – he stole to the principal's office at the end of the day. Icily clear-minded; wretchedly fogged in his heart. And when he was through the door, confronted and perhaps even provoked by the bitter smell of cigarette smoke, Nezu did not seem surprised. Neither by Aizawa's presence nor by the disquietude that accompanied him.

From his place behind the imposing desk, Nezu greeted Aizawa smilingly and simply, "Ah! Good afternoon, Eraser Head!" However, beyond this, he did not bother with any sorts of formalities – instead, as if having already prepared the air for Aizawa's onslaught, he stared with flat anticipation. Unsettling, likely also a tactic for disarmament; one which may have worked, were it not for Aizawa's bubbling hostility.

He could have started with the obvious question, but by an instinctive change of direction he began by keeping his voice level and calm. "You let Paper Cut go last weekend. At the Culture Festival."

"I was wondering how long it would take before you brought it up," Nezu said with a friendly sigh.

He left the statement hanging though, as if that were an answer in itself, and Aizawa narrowed his eyes in a show of dissatisfaction. "_Well_?" he prompted, demanding more in response to the question before them.

"Going after Paper Cut under such circumstances would have done more harm than good," Nezu explained frankly. "It would have given Doctor Voodoo cause for concern, and if that were to happen you wouldn't be able to find him for a good number more years. You should already know that though, Eraser Head." It came as a lighthearted scold. "Disappearing is something Voodoo and his agency pride themselves on. But coaxing them out into the light isn't an impossible feat either. The trick," Nezu waved his paw in the air for effect, "is merely to boil the pot slowly. To build up the anticipation, to use just the right bait. Doctor Voodoo likes games, Eraser Head. To win, you have to play by the rules."

"Is that what you told Rin?"

A loaded, unreadable stare. "I don't understand what you mean."

Aizawa grunted sourly, closing his hands into tight fists within his pockets. "I'd like to know what you spoke about with her – Rin, Hiruma-chan – after Paper Cut left."

"Ah! _That_," Nezu tutted, as though Aizawa's insistence happened to be ridiculous. "Nothing of particular importance. We only spoke about chess… But come now, there's surely no need for such a grim look, Eraser Head. What has you so worried?"

"Principal Nezu," Aizawa said, raising his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. What sort of senselessness was it that drove everyone to dance around him with riddles and half-truths? The desire to snap, to slam his hands against the rim of Nezu's desk, trembled just beneath Aizawa's flesh. However, driven by both a sense of professionalism and the need to not lose the thin grip he maintained on his remaining control, Aizawa only drew a breath of curdled air before saying with the greatest steadiness he could muster, "Please tell me where she is."

The smile across Nezu's face wavered. "Where she is?" he repeated in a bland mimic of skepticism. "But surely you already know."

"No," Aizawa just about spat, impatient and ever more confounded. "I don't."

"You mean Hiruma-chan didn't tell you?"

"She never told me a lot of things."

"But that doesn't make sense. Why wouldn't she say–"

"She left me." It came as a blow, mostly for its unexpectedness. As though having been punched through the chest, Aizawa's breath caught on the edges of his ribcage in a painful acidity. Where the words had come from – and why now, of all times – it was impossible to say, having spilled from him with the startling inadvertency of a drunken confession. It hung in the air, unsightly as soiled laundry and even more disturbing. Aizawa's face began to burn. The floor spun for a moment beneath him.

And for the first time in as long as Aizawa could remember, Nezu's face did a dramatic drop. "Oh my," the principal murmured, spinning swiftly on his chair to face away from Aizawa. "Now that isn't what I was expecting." Aizawa came closer, slightly dumbstruck before his own artlessness as well as by Nezu's subdued, pensive hum. "You're quite sure that was her intention? To _leave you_?"

Well.

"I don't see any other reason to believe otherwise," Aizawa said. "But what does that have to do with anything?"

Once more, Nezu twisted his chair back to its initial position. He set his gaze steadily on Aizawa, opaque and rat-like. "You have my apologies, Eraser Head." Genuine compassion in Nezu's voice was really quite alarming. Worse still, making Aizawa's organs collapse upon themselves, was the truth with which the principal subsequently said, "I'm afraid I have no idea where Hiruma-chan has gone."

* * *

Aizawa kept Rin's phone in the cupboard of his dormitory room, out of sight and for the most part out of mind. Tonight however, having skipped dinner (which wouldn't have been unusual if only he hadn't been scoffing down Rin's food for the last number of weeks like a starved beggar at a five star restaurant) and gone straight to locking himself away from the attention of his students, Aizawa ripped the device from beneath his meagre piles of clothing and clutched it between his fingers like a rare jewel. A remnant. A clue. Staring into the blackened screen as one would into the void.

He hadn't tried to guess her password. On the contrary, he'd tried his utmost not to look at the phone at all, though it vibrated with special vehemence at strange hours through the night and had become almost more of a demanding presence than even that of Class 2A on just the opposite side of the bedroom door.

With some sort of resolve which was mostly resignation, Aizawa tapped lightly at the unlock button. The screen lit up. The image of Rin's wallpaper – Blink the cat, staring with wide golden eyes into Aizawa's soul – was obstructed by a grand multitude of missed calls, the sight of which made Aizawa's innards sink and return slightly skewed to their original positions. It had been just over five days. Five days, and Rin's grandmother had called her three times. From the notification, it was possible to see the last call had been missed on Monday. Had Rin gotten hold of Granny? Told her she was safe and sound but not to be called again?

The rest of the calls, all 27 of them, were from a private number. The last of which had been two hours ago.

There were a few messages, and a few emails.

Aizawa didn't know what he was hoping to find – was about to return the phone to its hiding place once again as he heaved a morbid sigh – he was up to do so, reaching for the cupboard handle – but then, as though in resistance or enraged, the phone came to life with a violet shock in Aizawa's hand.

_Private Number_. **Buzz**. _Private Number_. **Buzz**.

It did not startle Aizawa – it would take more than that to do so. However, he did stand stunned in the center of his room's darkness for some moments. Staring with all-encompassing suspicion and indecision over the glaring title – _Private Number Private Number _– and the all but too-good-to-be-true timing. Deliberating, hesitating. Itching. Burning. Dying to answer. He answered. And there was an ominous silence over the line, the sort of silence that hung heavy as someone drew a breath. The sort of silence that kept Aizawa hanging onto the call, though a good number of seconds dragged by with nothing to be heard.

And when at last there came a voice, a word, a sentence, it came as a confusion of sounds layered one upon the other in a messy collage of answering-machine tones. Flat and excruciating, incensing Aizawa in their repetition of the same nonsense numbers. The same nonsense words. Once. Twice. A third time, with characters added. Four, five, in which something more coherent could be made out from the jumble. Six: an address. Tokyo. An unfamiliar ward. Seven, with the address fading back out into jumble. Eight, nine.

Aizawa spun towards his desk for pen and paper. Only too late.

Ten. The call ended on a drab recitation of mixed up letters and numbers once again, and upon the click of the line going dead Aizawa was left scraping through the muddle of digits in his memory in a feeble attempt to recall the fleeting moment of coherency. The address – Tokyo. A few numbers in no particular order.

The private number called again two hours later. This time the address was named on the fourth repeat.

And again two hours after that. The address was on the seventh repeat.

Every two hours until midnight. Then the calls stopped.

* * *

The next day, Aizawa planned to skip the staff meeting. He'd informed Principal Nezu of his expected absence, had received no objection in return, and now itched in wait for the end of the day. Curled in his sleeping bag at his desk in the teachers' office – sleep evading him with greater ease than usual, his mind piercingly awake and over-aware of everything and nothing as the hour ticked by. It was only eleven o'clock. 2A's English period. A gloomy air of thick grey outside the window, making the white light of the office seem clinical and harsh. Against it, Aizawa squinted at the crinkled note-paper in his hand, scrawled and scratched with pen.

He'd searched the address. He'd ruminated over the implications for the majority of his sleepless hours – and when he'd pulled out the newspaper article from Rin's apartment, tenderly hidden in amongst his administrative folders, it was as he'd suspected. The warehouse. The address was the warehouse, profoundly haunted by the ghost of a dead child trafficker and due any week now for demolition.

Upon the realization, Aizawa had waited for the headache to strike. He'd grown overly-aware of its approach, was an expert now at identifying the oozing sneak of its symptoms as the pain poised itself with hateful intention: the dull contraction at the back of his neck, the subtle flow of sensitivity into all his senses. He'd waited. Prepared himself for it. But it never came, and so Aizawa pushed onwards in a deliberate hunt for pictures and more information. He saved photos of the dilapidated, phantom-esque warehouse from every angle the internet would allow. He read up on the short, uninteresting history. He avoided thinking too deeply about what he himself may have known, for fear of the debilitating guardianship over his memories.

He'd split himself into two over the matter. The information which struck him with the same effect as a revelation. Mostly, he'd ached to catch a train to Tokyo in the dead hours of the night – Rin could have been there. Rin could have been there. Rin could have been there. And she could have been in danger. And Aizawa brought himself close to the knife's edge by thinking of it. But a detached logic, for once more powerful, overruled the urge: it may have been a cruel trick, the devil aiming to distract Aizawa with empty leads and ever-spiraling possibilities. It could have been a wild goose chase, a hunt for ghosts that fostered no plans to make themselves known.

And so in spite of the wild thrash of his heart, the feral toss of his pulse in his ears, Aizawa waited. He did not act rashly, thinking time and time again of Nezu's infuriating cunning – _use just the right bait_, he'd said. Doctor Voodoo and Paper Cut could have been doing the same thing. Aizawa checked his phone and his computer and, now poorly-concealed within his desk drawer, Rin's phone with the same restless urgency as one waiting to hear some terrible news. Everything was quiet, everything was still and unchanging. No new notifications. No new addresses.

Aizawa did not act rashly.

* * *

It was eleven thirty. Aizawa heard his name from the door, and jolted from his brooding he looked up with speed enough to make something at the back of his head twinge.

Bakugo. Bakugo stood there in the doorframe, clutching something at his side and looking irate. Mouth twisted sourly, eyes narrowed – though more in some distant thought of his own than any hostility, it seemed. He marched into the teachers' office, coming towards Aizawa with a measured determination. He rounded the desks, screwing up his face ever more as he grew closer. Aizawa noticed in Bakugo's hand an envelope, but did not make any show of paying attention to it.

"Did Present Mic finish your lesson early?" he questioned flatly.

To which Bakugo replied with a grunting spit, "I had to be excused."

"What for?"

Now before him, Bakugo thrust the envelope out for Aizawa to behold more clearly. "This was in my bag. I don't know what sort of shitty joke it is or which idiot put it there, but it's for you and not for me."

Aizawa narrowed his eyes, twisting a hand out from his sleeping bag to take the envelope, where indeed his name was written in delicate calligraphy across the front. The seal was crinkled oddly, undulating like ripples of white water as though opened and poorly reclosed. "You couldn't wait until after class to bring this to me?" Aizawa posed, and Bakugo only shoved his hands into his pockets with a huff. After a pause, growing ever more anxious, Aizawa felt his eyes begin to sting. "Did you open it?"

"I'm no sleaze-bag!" Bakugo asserted, features contorting into an incensed redness at the suggestion. "I didn't _touch _the fucking thing."

"It was only a question."

The boy pulled a face, embarrassed without looking it, and darted his eyes away with a loud, "_Tch_."

A silence, uncomfortable and unwieldy, fell between them. Its burdened quality made Aizawa reluctant to dismiss Bakugo, and seemed to make Bakugo reluctant to leave. They remained in their positions, frozen and waiting – waiting for the other to make a move, waiting for some sort of balance of power to reestablish itself. Bakugo, swallowing several times on nothing while refusing to meet Aizawa's eye, shifted his weight from foot to foot. Aizawa lowered his gaze to the envelope. Clutching it tighter. Looking back to Bakugo. Feeling his body grow heavy and unnerved within the warmth of his sleeping bag.

At last, he was about to speak. What sort of words would escape him this time, he couldn't say. But Bakugo beat him to it, propelling that intense look of attention over Aizawa as he said through close-to-gritted teeth, "She said she'd come back."

Before this – the implicit question, the restrained defenselessness which leaked through Bakugo's loaded expression – Aizawa was at a loss. He knew not what to say. So he said nothing.

And Bakugo, shifting his weight again, balling his hands so that they bulged into fists within his pockets, pursed his lips. "_Will she_?"

"I don't know."

Bakugo threw his gaze to the side again, saying with a farcical confidence, "She was the nicest person in this fucking school."

"I know."

Quietly, clearly unsatisfied but with nothing more to add – or perhaps no strength with which to say anything else – the boy turned and left the teachers' office in an undemonstrative meander. He muttered something to himself, the words tangling into an inaudible breeze of emotion, and Aizawa wished he could explain just how much he understood. It had been there, and however surprising it may have been under normal circumstances, Aizawa recognised without the slightest inkling of disbelief the loss in Bakugo's voice. As though he knew he didn't need to ask whether or not Rin was coming back. As though his words – _She was the nicest person in this fucking school _– were more eulogy than simple statement.

Tearing his eyes from Bakugo's back as the boy receded out into the corridor, Aizawa grasped the envelope harshly. The faint tremble about his fingers made the rims of the paper shake noticeably. The seal lacked any grip, and came undone with the same ease as bread breaking apart.

Inside was a photo of the warehouse's grimy exterior, taken from the empty parking lot overgrown with weeds and cracked concrete. Swirling clouds swarmed in from the distant sky. The lines and shadows blurry, as though shot in a careless rush but making the scene all the more unreal in its melancholy isolation. It was dated with the day and time in the corner, dull and red – taken yesterday evening. The address was written in stupidly extravagant calligraphy on the back, the characters' new familiarity making Aizawa's jaw clench in an instinctive defensiveness.

And behind it, another photo. Taken mere minutes after the first. Blacker, the surroundings obscure and blobby, but with light enough for the dazed, bruised, beautiful face in the center to be grotesquely clear. Aizawa's heart plunged. He twisted the photo to glimpse its back, and with a horror too immense to be suppressed by any sort of rationality, he read over the words – flouncy and thickly lined, expertly infuriating Aizawa in their nonchalant luxury – once, twice, thrice. Taking great pains to absorb their meaning through his sudden stupor.

_Come get me, Aizawa-sensei - and come alone xoxo_

He threw the photos into his drawer. He threw them, shut them away, and he ran.


	41. The Hunt

Chapter 41  
The Hunt

At that hour on that day, taking a car into Tokyo would perhaps have been one of Aizawa's worst decisions. Taking the train did not prove to be much better though, for surrounded as he was by people in the midday business rush – knowing without a doubt that they were paying him no heed but at the same time unable to shake the sneaking premonition that he was the prey to unseen eyes – Aizawa shifted feverishly and fidgeted constantly in his seat. Refusing to settle his attention for the entirety of the forty minute journey. Urging the train ever onwards at ever greater speeds.

Emergency numbers lay in wait beneath his fingertips. As a matter of fact, part of the situation's horror could be attributed to Aizawa's difficulty – or more specifically, his failure – to press dial. He'd been the one so insistent on calling the police; he'd been the one who'd grown irritated and cold towards Rin when she'd refused to do so. And yet, he couldn't possibly bring himself to do it either. Not now. _Come alone_. Such an instruction reared its ugly head often. In hostage situations, in kidnappings and as part of ransoms. Par for the course, words which Aizawa had stomached and disobeyed before. Now, however, a dark magic had rung itself within them: a binding, suffocating force of power which left Aizawa helplessly gasping within himself.

Debilitated, he glared for an age at his phone screen, at his police contacts. Appalled by himself, he shoved the mobile away into his pocket.

_Come alone_. Aizawa wasn't an idiot – he knew what he'd be walking into. A trap. An ambush. Perhaps a well-played deceit – but he couldn't risk that. He couldn't indulge in the possibility that whoever had sent those photos, be it Doctor Voodoo or Paper Cut or someone else entirely, they'd sent them under false pretenses and Rin was really in no danger at all. What the chances were of that, Aizawa couldn't make out. Terror fogged his rationality. Memories of the photos, of Rin in… _that state_… kept him from forming a coherent thought. Apart from one, that is – that perhaps this was how Rin must have felt. Every day. No matter the resources at her disposal, no matter the contacts nor the strengths nor the love and support, the formidable and unseen influence held greater sway. Growing. Growing. Piercing its claws deeper so that she went at it alone. All alone because of some twisted sense that there was no other choice.

* * *

After taking two taxis and sprinting some kilometers, Aizawa arrived at the warehouse. Thin sheets of white still peaked out from behind the clouds, cold and of little comfort as ominous shadows stretched out from the building's exterior in ragged, undulating greys. It was quiet, resonances of traffic sounding somewhere distant, faint enough to be mere undertones to the wispy hiss of wind.

Despite his rush, Aizawa remained far off, shrouded by the shadows of the surrounding structures. All equally dilapidated and wretched in their once-industrial blandness, without any indication of their being inhabited or not – where he stood, weeds grew out along the concrete, stretching blackened stems upwards and outwards in a twisting, wild display; broken windows and grimy walls; surfaces with peeling paint or cracks like vines or rusted signboards, graffitied and tattered. Nothing moved. Not cars, not people. And certainly not Aizawa.

He watched. The light behind the clouds began a dip along the horizon until everything was bathed in a gloomy, dusted purple haze. He waited. Waited for a longer time than he could count, feeling his spine come to life with electric agitation at even the most innocent of sounds: birds landing with scratchy hoots on the roofs above, creaks from the old wood and metal. Aizawa checked his phone multiple times, always keeping the number for the police a mere finger's swipe away and maintaining throughout his limbs a predatory readiness to strike and kill. His hand on his capture weapon. His other poised over the blades hidden within his clothing's layers.

Throughout the hours, he searched for life – scanning, and finding nothing – then would slink to a spot closer to the building of interest, remaining obscured from sight behind walls and doors and peculiar structures – scanning, sneaking, still finding nothing.

No obstacles. No movement in the barren parking lot nor around the warehouse's entranceways or windows. Breathing hard. Fighting off the chills that snipped at his cheeks and hands. Ready to be ambushed, ready to attack. Always ready, though Aizawa's mind refused to clear, drowsed by gnawing emotions which dulled his attention to the details of the warehouse. He'd look for layouts. He'd look for entrances and escape routes and vantage points – replaying plan after plan as he did so. But then in lesser-guarded moments, he'd look for slurs of white or for flashes of grace in the blackened windows. He'd listen, not for anything or anyone's voice but hers. Her. Rin. Rin could have been in there. The notion forced itself upon Aizawa continually, and he would have to shake himself awake from an anxious stupor time and time again.

* * *

Eventually, a low groan of thunder rolled in, followed by its own empty echo.

Aizawa didn't approach from the front, though if anyone was inside to expect him they'd likely be keeping an eye on the side doors anyway. And so, having spotted a far-removed area presumably once meant for deliveries, he went through a window. The glass had been smashed into jagged shards; Aizawa cleared the way to maneuver himself carefully and quickly through the remaining frame, and in a deft swoosh of movement like that of a black alley cat he landed himself within the building.

It stank of rust. It stank of mildew and damp and suffocating, murky dust. Keeping close to the walls, darkened and cold beneath years of neglect, Aizawa navigated his way through angled corridors. Steady steps. His goggles lowered before his eyes. Light from the outside oozed in through holes and windows, all of them odd and wrong in their placement. The gliding crunch of sanded ground beneath his boots left Aizawa nauseous and edgy. And all the while, he willed away unconscious efforts to remember, though the urge grew oppressive and irresistible as he ventured deeper into the labyrinthine simplicity of the warehouse's dimness.

Had he journeyed these hallways before? Was he stepping upon the imprints of his very own footprints, fossilized in years of dust and decay? The more he rejected the questions, the more they broke through into the forefront of his mind – should he have known where he was going? How must it have felt back then: him, nineteen years old and working to gain his independence, working to gain his experience? How must it have felt, knowing that children were at stake – the same as it felt now, perhaps, knowing that Rin may have needed him or that Rin was– Oh, god. There came the pinch in his neck, the growling threat of the pain as it readied itself at the base of his spine to pounce against him. Not now. Not now.

_Not now_.

Aizawa froze in his tracks, stealing a harsh breath of air – stale and muggy in his lungs. His spine stiff, his mind doing swirls and eddies of submission and resistance against the offensive ache and the relentless thoughts. Something was around the corner. Something was on top of him. No sound, no feeling, but it was there, and growing, and Aizawa was sure for a moment that he'd been standing rooted in place for years.

His skeleton was breaking within him, turning to sand or steel and splintering like wood. His organs were collapsing into cosmic explosions of darkness, but there was no agony. Only a disembodied lightness that floated Aizawa ever away and away. Blood. Why could he smell blood, in all its metallic sweetness? And silence. It was so loud. Dripping into his ears with the smooth, honeyed quality of children laughing. Or crying. Or – saying his name? Mutters. Mutters around the corner. Pulsing into his synapses with white hot threat. _Eraser Head_. A warm pressure appeared and vanished in his hands, against his chest. _Eraser Head_. The ground dissipated, the scaled walls falling away into nothingness and soon, after an eternity, in no time at all, AIzawa stood in the middle of a wide, grey space blurred and dotted in white.

…_Shouta_…

Something was on top of him.

A weight. A pull. A palm, fingers splayed and gentle as everything collapsed around him and suddenly – _suddenly _– he was back where he'd been, with the dizzy euphoria of crashing down, down, down.

"_Shouta_?"

And for the first time in the seconds that had disappeared from him, he was aware of the light touch against his shoulder. Everything fell back into focus, as though following behind him and descending upon his senses in a silvery cloud of reality. Not startled, not frightened, still unsteadied, Aizawa twisted his body against the corridor wall to face the person to whom such a calming, aggravating, wonderful touch belonged – and there she was. Too dazzlingly solid in her horror, too real and beautiful in the absolute dismay with which she stared at him for Aizawa to believe that she was anything but really, truly there. Her lips were parted. Her eyes were wide despite the heavy cling of shadows to their lids.

And she was pristinely, perfectly pale. Unblemished. Not a bruise nor a cut nor the slightest hint of a drugged-out slope about her features to be had.

"Shouta," Rin said again, as though only just realising for herself that it was certainly him. He was here. He was here for her. The chime of it sent a wild pulse through Aizawa's bones, and for a moment he could almost ignore the fact that the quiver in her voice made her sound revolted or petrified. "How–" she withdrew her hand, stepped back from him as though he planned to hurt her. "How did – what are you doing? Here? Why are you here?"

This was the first time Aizawa had seen her hero costume – all maroon, all soft materials falling about her torso and hips in comfortable, flowing folds but sleekly clinging to her arms and thighs. Milky, muscular calves. Shoes which looked more fairy-like in their lightness and point: good for running to danger. Good for escaping. Good for disappearing. Hair slicked tightly back from her face in a whip-like ponytail. White hands. White face, set upon him in a scandalized mask. An exquisite, confusing face which Aizawa wanted desperately to both slap and shower in kisses.

Without stepping away from his place against the wall, though also without removing his newly fixed gaze, Aizawa said softly, "You. I'm here for you."

Rin made an aghast sound like a choke or a scoff, but her expression remained unchanging. Baffled and horrorstruck. Thwarted and flustered. All myriads of complicated feeling in the ashy, hard-set contortion of her countenance. "But–" she spluttered. "_Why_?"

"God, Rin, don't make me explain."

She stepped away from him, almost looking ready to runaway – a look Aizawa recognised because it was a look he knew well. "Leave," she said at last after unending ticks of pregnant silence. "You have to leave. Right now."

"What happened to you?"

"What?"

"I got pictures. And I got messages. _What happened to you_?"

They both stared at each other in confusion: him fully realising that he had been played but somehow not being able to translate it into a comprehensible language for his heart or tongue, she without any indication of understanding but all the world's worth of sickening fright. Aizawa wanted to leave. He wanted to abandon everything and cocoon her in his arms and flee. But now too, he couldn't bear the thought of it – some inkling trepidation held him back, some feeling that he was close. So close. So, so close to knowing. Here he was and here she was at what was perhaps the start of so much more than he could possibly comprehend. There'd be no leaving now. Not for him and not for her, though the terrible foreboding which underscored all Aizawa's stomach-churning instincts made him wish she'd be gone to some place far off and safe.

At an obscure location not far from their own, something dropped, heavy and metallic and reverberating through the corridors' eerie hush. Rin cringed at the sound of it, and shot her gaze between Aizawa and the stretch of space behind him. "I don't understand," she murmured, tense and despairing. "What do you mean by messages and… _pictures_? Did Nezu put you up to this?"

Nezu? "What?"

"How did you know to come here?"

Aizawa, in his own muddle of bafflement and relief, spoke through near-gritted teeth, "There were–"

But it all faded away into the awful, devilish sound of _his _voice, "Oh, _Riiin_~" Paper Cut. Slick and taunting like a child before an injured beetle. "You're getting warmer, Riiin. Come and geeet me~" He was close.

Too close, and with the sensation that he'd been caught within a bladed mousetrap, Aizawa shot Rin a look that he knew to be pathetically pleading. The reserves of his resolve swiftly running low, begging that she turn away with him and run the other way. For the first time in his life as a hero, Aizawa came so close to grabbing Rin's wrist and fleeing – fleeing to some place that Paper Cut and Doctor Voodoo and nobody else, no matter the genius, would never find them because, fucking hell, he loved her. He loved her and he didn't know if after everything he'd be able to keep her safe. And he couldn't lose her. Please God. He couldn't lose her.

But she only looked at him, pulling a face like a woman about to jump.

And then off she went, spinning on her toes in all the enchanting grace of a figure skater and sprinting away down the corridor towards Kizashi as he continued to call her name. Slow motion. So close. Close enough that Aizawa had had her right there within his grasp, and now there was no chance of him allowing her to slip away again.


	42. The Game - Starting Point

Chapter 42  
The Game – Starting Point

Black walls struck past them in shadowy mirages of shape and texture. The footfalls of their advance bounded up and around in dull, suffocated echoes. Rin ran fast, keeping ahead of Aizawa with her weight balanced deftly over her toes: chasseing around corners in breezy waves of movement and material, navigating the ever-darkening corridors with a steely focus though it was clear she knew as little of their location as Aizawa himself did. Close to nothing. Using only the haunted echo of Kizashi's voice as he mocked and taunted – _You're here too, aren't you, Eraser Head? See what you've done, Rin? See what you've done~? _– as a guide to their path.

Such darkly honeyed sounds clawed and crept across the grimy surfaces from every direction, and made Aizawa's head spin with a hatred so fervently poisonous it almost burned. Through every sinew. Right into the marrows of his bones, chilled and glowing in excruciating insistence.

Once – and one too many times – he tried to stop her. Catching up, for Rin was surprisingly nimble for someone with a freshly healed chest injury as well as faster than Aizawa could remember, he reached out for her wrist. Thin and flashing white behind slips of smooth maroon. Somehow shaken by the fine, fragile shape as he grasped it harder than he'd intended; hard enough, as a matter of fact, that with only a mere amount more force Aizawa would have been able to pull her shoulder from its socket. Rin came to a harsh and graceless stop, and for the first time since their initial meeting she looked at him.

Or rather, she looked through him with a blank, hollow sadness, and limply twisted her wrist in his grip. "Let go." Suddenly frozen in place, she seemed to melt into herself – however, through both experience and expectation, Aizawa knew that were he to release his hold she would bolt off once again like a feline shocked from high places.

"We can leave," Aizawa said quietly, gently, willing Rin to meet his gaze. Shrouded by the secrecy of the warehouse's dimness, his anxiety confused with tenderness, his fingers tightened themselves into a firm gesture of imploration. "Whatever you're trying to do here, there's a better way of–"

"There isn't," Rin interrupted, murmuring and still without settling her eyes. "_This_… this is…" She swallowed, tried again without success to pull herself free. "I wish you hadn't come."

Rin seemed to realise the silliness of the statement – like children bickering, a harmless playground insult flung around with indifference rather than by any malicious intent – and she bit into the corner of her lip, looking embarrassed by the underwhelming implication. Aizawa, on the other hand, despite his better judgement and despite knowing full-well that she didn't mean to be cold, could feel himself tremble. Could feel his insides wilt and shrivel as though he were… hurt? As though he had hoped Rin would come falling into his arms like a sakura petal from the tree, her fingers lacing a crown through his hair as she allowed herself to be carried off freely into the grey-scale sunset?

Frankly, he had hoped for that. Really, there was no denying it. Aizawa had hoped that when she'd left, it had torn her up just as much as it had done him – though of course, his own melancholy had been tinged with rather more indignation. He tried to muster it now; tried to think of the frustration and the manipulation and all the deceptive, unfair things Rin had done – simply for the sake of quelling his own disappointment in the face of her dismay. And indeed, a certain resentment managed to rear itself. For a moment, Aizawa managed to wish too that he hadn't come. After all, Rin had kept things from him and he had never tolerated secrecy before. Rin had stolen things and he wasn't in the business of accepting blatant robbery which came as a sort of betrayal. Rin had done this and that, and Aizawa could think of any number of reasons as to why it was all completely absurd that he should be here now, wanting desperately to whisk her away.

But then Rin's wrist slunk from his hold and her fingers graced over his. She did not face him fully, angled in a shamed cringe so that her pale eyes only just glimmered through her face's shadows. "I messed up, Shouta," she whimpered.

And he, no longer so sure of his antipathy, pulled her towards himself. Slowly. Softly, so as to not break the sudden magic so delicately established in such godforsaken darkness. "I know."

"And you're not supposed to be here."

"Yet, here I am."

"Why?" Choked, resigned. Rin, allowing herself to be held, stared up at Aizawa with an expression teetering on pain. _Why_? Tears didn't come, and for a moment everything around them seemed to envelop itself in a frozen, weightless blur. Aizawa knew why. Surely Rin should have known it too – surely, after everything, it needn't have been said aloud. There were secret languages in looks and gestures, in all the shit Aizawa had dealt with for her sake. The words had been spelled out for them both so many times before, perhaps even from the very beginning; yet still, the question hung itself in the air, a throbbing wound in its ugly incompletion.

Aizawa pressed her head lightly into his chest. He held Rin there, wanting to bury his own face into her hair as he'd done so many times before but instead remaining resolute. Dirty smell of age and grime around them. A metallic coldness striking their exposed skin. More certain of it than anything before, Aizawa answered in a voice firm and loud enough for all the unseen listeners to hear, "Because I love you."

Everything fell quiet again, and Rin went heavy in his arms. Stiffening, hardly drawing a breath let alone making any move to reply.

And then a slice of pain, swift to appear before lingering in his skin with a burn like raw acid, went hot across Aizawa's cheek. Rin sprang away at his body's sudden tensing. She leapt backwards and into an eager, defensive stance while Aizawa did the same, one hand rising to his face and then falling away again with blood at its fingertips.

Around their heads, a white breeze of movement at first before slowing down to the pace of a stalking bird of prey, was a paper plane. Folded into sharp, perfect angles. Hovering ominously between Rin and Aizawa for some moments, almost seeming to hiss with a life of its own. Its tip was dotted red like an arrowhead. It circled and dropped in smooth, practiced movements, darting off in the direction from which it came. Soaring. Stopping. Crinkling before the shadows and falling to the floor in a clumpy, careless ball.

"So that's it, Eraser Head?" came a voice, solid now rather than echoing from a distance. Paper Cut emerged from around a corner, wandering casually towards Aizawa and Rin. "You love her? Come on, you'll have to be more creative than that." He stopped some way away, and Aizawa's hands were ready over his capture weapon and the various blades concealed on his person. Rin simmered next to him. Paper Cut made no move, but allowed his devilish features – pristine and sickly glowing in the weak light with a new, high definition awfulness – to contort into a wide smirk, "I had to work so hard to get you both here. Please don't disappoint me."

Slipping a graceful, gloved hand into his pocket, Paper Cut was slow and deliberate in revealing a small stack of glossy paper. "I heard you say you received my photo, Eraser Head. Did you like it?" Paper Cut flung the stack towards Aizawa, and the papers scattered across the floor before his feet with a plastic flopping. Photographs. Paper Cut continued, "It was from my private collection. Not really one of my favourites, mind you – a little too unexciting, so I had no qualms parting with it."

Aizawa's heart sank. As much as he tried to keep his eyes from looking downwards, he simply could not pry them away, and in scattered glances he saw Rin against the oozing dimness. Her face, her skin, bare and often times battered. There were fingers in her hair, clutching like serpents. There was her back, finely carved with muscle and milky flesh. There was her mouth, and glazed eyes, and her neck tensed beneath a palm. Sometimes, in nightmarish blurs, there was Paper Cut himself – his lips pressed harshly to hers, his own skin, his hands in all sorts of places.

Aizawa looked to Rin, and she was frozen in horror.

Paper Cut's voice came as though from deep underwater, "I thought you might like these, Eraser Head, so I simply _had _to have Yukio deliver a little taster…"

Rin's head jerked on her shoulders. Looking sick, she ripped her attention from the photos and from Aizawa to stare daggers down Kizashi's throat. "Yukio–" she began.

Kizashi waved his hand, unaffected and dismissive in its lazy lavishness. "Yes, yes. He's on his way. I know my message said he'd be here, but he's just been _so busy _these last few days keeping an eye on you and all your new friends at UA." Turning the vile smirk onto Aizawa, Kizashi cocked his head teasingly. "He's not exactly as cute in that little uniform as Rin always was, so I won't blame you for not noticing him while he breathed down your necks." Back to Rin. "But poor Yukio's been so torn up, you know. Seeing how you've replaced him with all those lovely teenagers. Especially that Bakugo boy– Yukio said you look _so fond _of that one–"

"Don't listen," Aizawa spat in spite of himself, and lifted his hand in an instinctive motion towards Rin. "He's baiting you."

She said nothing in return, but trembled and continued to stare at Kizashi. White fingers poised with bladed smoothness. A hard-set and unreadable mask. Then she twisted around with painful speed, and threw her hand up towards nothing – and from her palm, like seeping ribbons, thin trails of crimson slithered and gathered and were propelled outwards as though through veins rather than air. Blood. Deep and silken. Aizawa, slightly starstruck, followed Rin's gaze to find new paper planes having appeared from the silent stillness, only now to have fallen soggy and blood-stained and useless to the floor.

They quivered like sick birds before crumpling into balls, stewing in dribbles of red.

But there appeared once again that flashing sting, this time across Aizawa's other cheek, just under the line of his goggles and with much greater fervor. And when he darted outwards, he watched another paper plane curve gracefully up into the air. Around. Around. Swirling ostentatiously before disappearing out of sight into the depths of the corridors.

The incision was much deeper this time, and an oozing droplet like a tear fell down Aizawa's skin in slow, warm stickiness.

"Sorry about that, Eraser Head," Paper Cut said, lowering his hand back into his pocket. "It's not normally my style to use my quirk so outrightly, but I've got instructions, you know? Doctor Voodoo has been so looking forward to seeing you, he wanted to prepare a little gift." Several steps forward. He pulled out a box of cigarettes, flipped it open and plucked one out. Placing it between his lips, his black eyes settled in the smiling charm of a king cobra. "Something to repay you for all the–"

"Where is Doctor Voodoo?" Rin demanded, louder than Aizawa had ever heard her.

Kizashi raised his eyebrows at Rin, then shook his head. He paused to pull a lighter from his other pocket, and lighting his cigarette with an infuriating nonchalance, seemed to wait for Rin to speak once more – but when nothing came, her lips trembling and making Aizawa's heart skid and break, Paper Cut took the freshly decaying cigarette from his between his teeth and sighed exaggeratedly. "Want to know something, Eraser Head?"

"Not particularly," Aizawa replied, restraining something close to a snarl as it rumbled out from his chest.

Paper Cut pretended not to hear him. "Rin's a ticking time bomb." A puff, a swirling cloud of smoke rising up into the air like a silvery veil. "She cuddles up to you. She makes you dinners and flutters those pretty eyelashes and plays by all the right rules to get you hooked. But then," snap of his fingers, "she pulls some fucking ridiculous shit like dragging you into a game you have no business playing. Believe me, Eraser Head, you and I are in the same boat. See those photos? Have a good fucking look."

"Shouta. _Please_ don't–"

"_Do it_, Eraser Head."

Despite the agonizing plea in Rin's voice and despite the icy rage which pricked Aizawa with every one of Paper Cut's words, he looked. Aizawa, though every part of him begged him not to, dropped his eyes to the scattering of photographs and looked and looked and _looked_. At Rin, at the incandescent slur of her features committed to paper. Knowing exactly what sort of trick was being played and yet not being able to stop himself – Rin, flashes of black lace, the gloss of the images or the shimmer of sweat, bruises, cigarette burns. A familiar face stared back at Aizawa, but sometimes a face much younger. Much softer. Green eyes sometimes filled with fear, other times with a recognisable ecstasy.

His guard was down, but nothing came. The walls around him only seemed to close in with potent obscurity, making the images before him spin and warp into some awful montage. Aizawa, feeling the oxygen burn through his lungs like a spirit, worked to steady himself by setting his eyes firmly on one of the photos. Though really, he should have looked at something else. At Rin – the one of now, whose fingers touched at his hand but disappeared into a numb shock of emotion – rather than at the pretty, youthful face looking out from some past life haunted with phantoms of memory and half-truths.

"The first of those photos was taken, oh, say…" Paper Cut dragged deeply on his cigarette, letting the statement hang unfinished for some moments before finishing through a cloud of grey. "When Rin was about seventeen."

Seventeen. The aching began its outward blossom from the base of Aizawa's neck – please not again, not now – and though he was vaguely aware of Rin's palms closing around the top of his arm, he froze in anticipation.

"Kizashi," Aizawa heard her say, "Don't do this."

Followed by Paper Cut's throaty, smooth chuckle, "Seventeen sounds about right. I mean, to be fair, it was all supposed to start out as a little game. Doctor Voodoo's experiment, if you will, and all I had to do was give Rin some extra motivation to join our agency, as though having had Yukio there wouldn't have been enough – play the role of the nice guy, send her flowers, tell her she was such a promising hero, all that jazz." He was coming closer. "It wasn't anything else at first, I was only doing a job. But then there she was, making eyes, flouncing about in that little school skirt and – fuck, I just couldn't say no. And she couldn't either, could you Rin? After that, you kept coming back for more and more and–"

Blindly, Aizawa clutched a blade from its concealment and threw. The angle was perfect. The intention was pure and hateful, and it was only by a well-chanced inch that it missed Kizashi's throat.

But by this, Kizashi was unruffled. He flashed a sneer, cigarette still balanced and burning between his fingertips as the faint, metallic clatter of the blade dropping chimed at the end of the corridor. "Does that upset you, Aizawa-sensei?" he taunted knowingly. "Does it make you ache to know now that while she was in your class, while you looked her up and down knowing full-well that your dear student could never be yours, _I_ was fucking her? Because there you have it. I've been fucking her since all the way back then and she was _begging _me for it."

Deftly flicking his fingers, the cigarette went flying – soaring, with the same pointed grace as the paper planes. Ash dropped from its tip, searing red and angry as it bulleted towards Aizawa. Eye-level. A clear, single stripe through the slats in his goggles. Chest flaring, eyes burning, Aizawa felt the simmering sensation through his head as he activated his quirk, staring hard at Kizashi and watching the cigarette drop pathetically from its path. Its paper casing shriveled upon the floor. Without anyone's boot having met it, the cigarette folded in upon itself as though in shame, its smoldering mouth dying down into grey.

"She played by all the right rules," Kizashi said again, apparently unperturbed by his quirk's erasure. "And I fell in love."

Aizawa felt Rin shrivel next to him as she murmured, "_That _wasn't love."

"But _then_ she went ahead and tried to fuck everything up because she just doesn't appreciate everything Voodoo did for her. Almost blowing our whole operation. Actually blowing her old teacher, as though what she and I had was nothing." Suddenly, the air changed, like an impending storm. Kizashi came closer once again, still without any apparent intent to attack properly but setting Aizawa's teeth ever more on edge. "After _everything we did for you_, Rin. The stories we covered, the secrets we kept – Doctor Voodoo saw so much potential in you. Ever since you were a little girl – ever since you killed that poor man – Voodoo saw _so much potential_."

Helpless, the pain began its spread, and Aizawa could do nothing to quell the roiling emotions as they fed into his foiled attempts at remembering. Killed a man. Rin had killed a man – or Paper Cut said so, and it must have been lies, but Rin did nothing to deny it. She only made a strangled sound, allowing her hands to disappear from their place along Aizawa's arm. And she only lifted and coiled her fingers with hypnotic swiftness, serpentine grace, summoning out thin slivers of bloodstreams from her wrists' concealment. Through an impending daze, bright light crawling into the corners of his vision like rising suns, Aizawa watched with breathless bemusement as paths of crimson flew out towards Kizashi like the chords of his own scarf.

Kizashi seemed to dodge them, and Rin slid out from Aizawa's line of vision. Instinctively, his own hands went up to his capture weapon, his eyes still set on Paper Cut and his quirk's power still active throughout his bones. What there was to achieve, Aizawa somehow couldn't decide – to capture, to silence. Throwing out his scarf's edge in the beginnings of an attack, Aizawa repeated to himself that Kizashi wasn't to be believed. But last time, everything he'd said had ended up being true – and Rin had left, and every inch of Aizawa's soul had ached with the desire not to believe any of this had happened. That he hadn't, in some confused way, been lied to and charmed. That there was nothing for him to remember.

He blinked.

In his unguardedness, Aizawa gave Kizashi all the opportunity to evade his attack. More than that, Kizashi managed with the ease of a snake in water to come up close – face to face, only inches away, so that Aizawa could see the flecks like molten gold in his eyes as he lifted a clawed hand with paper talons having materialized seemingly from nothing. Paper Cut grinned sickly, and made to stab at Aizawa's neck or face or shoulders, and only by a moment's grace did Aizawa slip from the line of fire. As he did so, a whipping thread of crimson warped around Kizashi's wrist and hardened to a rubbery, iron-scented entrapment.

Rin was out to the side, encircled by orbiting threads of blood once again reminiscent of Aizawa's own weapon. Metallic sheen in the shadows. Healthy, deep red glimmer. In a way Aizawa had forgotten but now suddenly recalled with piercing clarity, the whites of her eyes had blackened into negative space, and her iris's greens glowed vampirically in their new surrounds of bloody-black darkness. With one hand, held out and fisted, she held Paper Cut in position with her quirk. The other remained suspended gracefully alongside herself.

Aizawa's pulse contorted with thrill and confusion at seeing her… like this. So self-assured. So certain – a shocking, perhaps almost pleasurable contrast to the teenager who'd been too scared to even lift a finger in the direction of an opponent.

But then again – was Aizawa really remembering right?

The heat in his neck flared into the base of his skull, and it took an unappetizing amount of resilience not to crumple and groan.

Paper Cut, pausing for a moment to consider Rin seriously before cracking another charismatic grin, shook his head at her, though he made no attempt to pull himself free. "You probably don't need me to tell you that this would all be a lot easier if you would just use your quirk properly." Mockingly, he lifted both hands above his head in a show of surrender. "But alright, children. You got me. I say we just calm down and talk things through – after all, I believe a certain someone has arrived who has a lot of questions for you, Rin."

Though she now stood some distance away, Aizawa felt Rin's air drop. He looked at her – the new blacks of her eyes receded into white once again, and as they did so the crimson linings which surrounded her began to disintegrate and descend down into the soft folds of her costume as though the material itself were formed from her blood. His heartbeat in his ears, the metallic taste of panic upon his tongue, Aizawa watched helplessly as Rin spiraled into a resigned stillness. She didn't look to him, but instead turned slowly to follow Kizashi's gaze. Inadvertently, eyes set on her, Aizawa turned too – and soon enough was confronted by a rabid, unhappy little face at the end of the corridor. Glaring. Spitting poison with a sullen, childish hatred.

"Yukio."

Yukio still wore the UA girls' uniform, and though it was hard to tell through the lighting's poorness, the bruises across his face had faded and the pink puff of his hair had been brushed in new directions of curls and disaster. All knees and elbows, spindly limbs without stockings or a blazer, it seemed impossible that he didn't shiver against the warehouse's ominous chill. He tip-toed closer, looking like a child grumpy after having only just been woken from a nap. His gaze, disconcerting in its anemic shadowing, didn't leave Aizawa. Stifling him. Threatening him with the promise of agony.

No one spoke. No one moved a muscle except for Yukio, who came closer – ever closer, until at last squeezing himself into Rin's side. Spidery arms curling around her waist, head pressing into her chest and his intent stare at last falling away from Aizawa.

"Rin-chan~" the girl-boy-man muttered something else into her costume, and to Aizawa's dismay, Rin wilted like a flower in snow. Looking defeated. Suddenly weak and fragile. Her arms lifted and suspended themselves in an uncertain circling around Yukio's shoulders. Her fingers trembled. And she, with a darting terror, glanced between Kizashi as he watched in mirthful silence and Yukio as he clutched her tighter in drowsy desperation and Aizawa as his stomach dropped and dropped and dropped with a terrible foreboding.

* * *

**A/N: Sorry for the longer-than-average wait between updates. Holidays have been crazy-busy...**

**For those who have been wondering about Rin's quirk (that's right, I'm talking to you _fatwhiteguy_) I'd suggest you stay tuned for the next two chapters. :P As always lovely readers - follow, favourite and review!**


	43. The Game - Chaos

Chapter 43  
The Game – Chaos

_Everything simmers. I am suffocating._

_In the familiar grip of Yukio's arms, his turmoil meeting me in shocks of hopeless guilt; under the weight of Kizashi's gaze, years-old scars in the form of dirty handprints ripping all over me – I feel it burn, I feel it gnaw, as though I am being eaten from the inside out by creatures rabid and hungry. _

_I want to scream, but Yukio clings to me. My skin. My costume. My hands. Still a child, staring up with all the dull-eyed questioning for which I have no answers. "Everything's fine now, Rin-chan," he says, and it seems he's speaking to a doll. Beautiful heart. Disintegrating brain. "No one will hurt you anymore. No one's going to take you away." _

_My lungs refuse oxygen. It's my fault. My bones shatter within my limbs. It's all my fault. Kizashi is silent and smiling, watching – and I, choking against the cry that begs to escape, pull Yukio closer. Because for everything that has happened, he's a child still, and he's trembling even more than I am, and I have failed him so many times. I have failed. Because I swallowed down upon my childhood years ago, but now something cold and awful branches through my veins and within myself, I feel everything crumble. _

_And you – despite it all, you look at me with all that same softness. You are confused. You are angry. You told me you loved me._

"_He can't hurt you anymore, Rin-chan," Yukio says._

_And god, do I wish I could tell you how much I love you too. _

* * *

With a flustered, miserable insistence, Yukio continued to mutter all sorts of things into the silence that had fallen upon them. Aizawa watched, watched as Rin ran her hands down Yukio's back. As she leaned her face into his and replied in tones too quiet to hear. Every now and then, her eyes would flit towards Aizawa once again, and then to Paper Cut – full of knowing, guarded against the moment he would pounce – and then back to Aizawa, smoldering richly in an enigmatic agony.

When Paper Cut spoke once more – "Yukio-kun," stepping closer, "Tell us again why Rin asked you to take away Aizawa-sensei's memories" – it seemed to pierce through both Rin and Yukio with matched intensity. Their spines went stiff, arms tensing around each other into awkward angles like cracks in glass. Yukio twisted his head on his shoulders in agitation, nuzzling himself against Rin's chest, and then grimaced away.

His hands hung in hers. He focused on the ground, pink hair looping against his forehead in dirty tufts. "She was scared," Yukio said, a melancholy hiss, and allowed his gaze to return to Rin's with greater confidence. "You were scared, Rin-chan. Of him. Right? You were scared."

Aizawa's grip upon his scarf, already having slackened, dropped with his heart.

Rin's voice came as a harsh rasp, "What?"

"You cried all the time, and you had lots of nightmares…" Moving his hand up her arm, slow and tentative until it came to rest next to her ribcage, Yukio flattened his palm with childish tenderness into the folds of Rin's clothing. His mouth curling sourly. Rin's own features freezing in an insipid, terrible mask of confusion and dismay as Yukio pressed onwards, "And bruises… And lots of sores…"

"That wasn't–"

"Because of _him_," Yukio spat, looking to Aizawa with a hatred freshly pure and luminous. "Him! He wouldn't leave you alone!" A maniacal quaver rose into his voice, and something flared in Aizawa's spine that wasn't quite pain or pleasure but instead the anaesthetized, distant tremble of panic. Of all the things not to remember! "You wouldn't leave us alone!"

In a flash of movement both graceful and thrown, Rin clutched Yukio's arms, pulling him sharply to face her once again. They stared at each other, Yukio's expression melting into shock in the face of Rin's new sternness, and she narrowed her eyes at him like an older sister terribly displeased. Saying his name, that practiced counsellor monotone which managed to threaten and soothe – she told him he'd made a mistake; she told him something wasn't right: no one in the world cared more for her than Aizawa. He'd never hurt her. _He'd never hurt her._ And in a sudden softening, dewy and mild with the sound of tears, Rin told Yukio she was sorry.

Sorry for what? Aizawa couldn't say.

It all met his ears in wavering, hollow distortions of sound, the syllables blending into the pain and both of those into the images he forced to mind. He imagined himself leaving bruises over her skin – calloused hands, bloodied teeth – or planting the searing heat of cigarettes up her side. He imagined her curled up next to him in the dead of night, crying without making a sound, hoping either that he wouldn't wake up or that she herself wouldn't. Scared because of him. Because of him. And though the thought left Aizawa squirming and hating himself – no; never; he could never have done such things – his mind refused to relent.

Pain. Clawing. Sinking its teeth. Leaving his hands limp at his sides while he watched through a spotty, white daze as Yukio shook his head at Rin. His lips moved in response to hers, the sounds of which failed to reach Aizawa in their entirety – _No, Rin-chan, I don't understand. Doctor Voodoo wouldn't do that. He wouldn't. He promised. He promised! _– and all the while, Paper Cut watched. Indeed, Aizawa felt the black gaze along his frame; he knew Paper Cut was waiting, waiting for just the right moment to strike; practiced astuteness; dreadful intentions; but Aizawa couldn't move.

He couldn't think. He couldn't breathe, overcome. Powerlessly, with Yukio's rising shrieks echoing between his ears, Aizawa sank into unseen waters – everything blackening, throbs of sensation and colour scorching in the corners of his vision in perfect unison with his heartbeat. The unseen thing crawled back upon his shoulders, gripping his throat between warm, pitiless hands – he gasped, but was being strangled; he pulled at his scarf in a bid for air.

Something like a bone splintered. Something snapped and slipped.

"But I don't understand," he heard Yukio say, echoing out in a confused, dogged obscuring. "You… And Eraser Head… I thought–"

Then came Rin, hushing, making Aizawa's heart thrash as though hearing her voice for the first time. "I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry this all got so confused."

"Doctor Voodoo said–"

"Doctor Voodoo lied." Slicing finality.

There was a pause. Squinting against the cosmic blurs which clouded his vision, nauseous as his head spun and slowed at impossible speeds, Aizawa mustered all his focus to watch as Yukio's attention dropped to the ground. Like the moment before an explosion, everything was agonizingly still. Silent. Slipping. Half-cradled in Rin's arms, half-falling out from her frail hold, Yukio stooped in an animal contortion to pluck a photo from the floor.

He stared. Stared for a long time. And for the most evanescent of moments, Aizawa's senses fell back into place. Rin's eye met his, her face peering over the mess of Yukio's hair. Exhausted hang about her features. Morbidly pale, she looked about ready to cry.

Breaking the silence, Yukio didn't glance up from the photo, but spoke again with the violent hiss of the demented. "Kizashi~"

"Yes, Yukio-kun?"

"You said I had to deliver a photo for Eraser Head," he said flatly. "A _special _photo… One of yours…"

A smirk curled itself into Kizashi's voice, honeyed and dark. "That's right."

Foreboding dread prickled up Aizawa's spine. So too, it seemed, up Rin's. Neither of them tore away their gaze, neither of them ventured to move – and with new intensity, a desire for her tore through Aizawa's heart. So many times before, they'd been under the secrecy of darkness quite the same as this: emotions just as heavy-laden, logic failing and at the same time prevailing, for never in Aizawa's life had he been so certain of anything as he'd been in the small circle of Rin's arms. _Do you believe in fate? _Nezu had asked him. He still wasn't sure; but he knew even now that loving Rin was the closest he'd ever come to believing in divine intervention.

Indeed, even now, while she looked haggard and worn out from all the secrecy uncovered. Within himself, Aizawa was angry, and part of it was because of her. Under the immensity of the silence, short-lived though it was, he considered with a piercing clear-headedness the sheer confusion of all the things he felt. No name could be put to it, and sadly no amount of rationality would allow him to dig himself from such a chasm.

Despite it all though – or perhaps because of it, weakened and vulnerable – Aizawa didn't particularly want to dig himself out. He wanted nothing more than her. To run away. Love her. Love her simply and without all of… this.

Out the corner of his eye, Aizawa noticed the photo drop down from Yukio's hand. Spinning in the air, landing face down atop the other photos. Paper Cut started to say something; however, before a coherent syllable could make its way out from his lips, Yukio let out an awful, animal cry.

* * *

_Yukio paws at his eyes, and tears like molten silver begin to leak out from the edges. _

_He cries inconsolable cries, and I see it all: the bloodrush of memories back through his brain and chest, breaking out like undead claws through soil. _

_Shrill whimpers – "Everybody lies! Everybody– no, no, stop! Please stop! I don't want this!" – and it's as though insects crawl along his skin, the way he smacks and scratches at nothing. The way he begins to pull the uniform – blazer first, thrown to the floor over the photos (those sickening remnants of nights long-gone, glaring out at me in their haunting vileness), then his hands are at the shirt and at his hair – and he rubs, rubs, rubs raw over his own terrible, swelling scars._

_The memories come back as they do in nightmares. His. Mine. I know, I see – for the first time, Yukio looks at me with fear. He has blue eyes. Irises shattering like ice, whites turned red with agony refusing to stop. He shakes. Shakes like his bones are breaking, though that is not the pain he has made himself forget, for it is not the pain of spoiled hands over baby clean flesh. It's not the same sort of anguish._

"_Make it stop, Rin-chan." Snaking death envelops me from the inside. There's nothing I can do. "Please! Please! I don't want to remember." _

_Recollection._

_The tears don't stop though his stare goes dull: a milky way glaze over his features, dewy with sweat even though wintery breezes slither against us. As he does in nightmares, Yukio goes limp in my arms – thrashing limbs and pulse slowing to burdened, miserable strokes – head wet and heavy into my chest. Can he hear how my heartbeat screeches to a halt? How it starts up again with the stuttering resistance of breaking machinery? _

_I cannot stop myself, though I see you flinch and hang your head. Though one half of me begs for you – let's run away! – my gaze falls and my lips meet Yukio's forehead, rooting me here. His hair sticks to his skin, twisting like lily roots atop pond waters. I taste salt. I feel the stick of raw flesh where Kizashi or Voodoo have pulled out clumps from his hair like grass from the dirt. My finger touches a scab across his cheek. All these little wounds! Inflicted by my own pride and selfishness and inadequacy. I couldn't protect him. Here because of me. Hurt because of me._

_I couldn't protect him. _

"_Everything's fine. Everything's fine. I'm here, Yukio. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't find you. Everything's fine."_

_He heaves. He sobs. _

_And then from nowhere, upon a ghostly breeze with the smell of cigarette smoke – no, no, oh fuck, please no – Kizashi is at my back. Lips to my ear. Hand against mine where it lingers against Yukio's fragile shoulder. "See what happens when you keep secrets, Rin?" he asks me, whispering my name in all the same, scorching ways. "Innocent little boys get hurt."_

_You are a flash of movement – black and white, serpentine quickness – in the corner of my eye. My spine crumbles in my back. My heart pounds to life in my eyes, all colour no sound. By the time the knife has been slipped from its concealment in my costume, it's too late; and when Yukio strikes out from my arms to swing at Kizashi, all venom and twisted limbs like a snake's lashing tail, the metallic glint is like sunlight in my eyes. I turn too, reaching for Yukio – his name slips from my tongue – feeling the blood swell at my fingertips in soothing, queasy warmth. _

_Somehow though, I am being dragged in the opposite direction. Away, away as Yukio stabs through the air and as Kizashi dances in dodging. Watching. Watching me, white lips curling into that smile I know too well before he disappears behind corners of blackened walls. Walls so familiar. Walls so wrong. _

_Your hand is around my wrist. And you're running._

* * *

Rin's hand pawed at his, trying with a surprising strength to push him off. "Let go! Let go of me, Shouta!"

Beneath him, Aizawa's legs beat onwards through corridors he didn't know and down turns he didn't recognise. Entrances and exits loomed in his mind, all the escape plans he'd spent hours brooding over somehow now evading him. This way? It all looked quite the same as before: abandoned materials of boxes and cardboard along flimsy, dirty concrete. That way? Shadows. Same smells of grime and mustiness – and more faintly, growing more potent in its rotten strength by the minutes, blood. Full-bodied and carnal. Where from? There was no telling. But it seeped through Aizawa's senses, bathing them in quite the same way as the headache as it spread and receded and spread and receded.

Yukio's shrill little voice followed behind them in haunting echoes and indistinct wailings. Like a burned afterimage, the scene replayed itself behind Aizawa's eyes – how easily Yukio had slipped the blade from Rin's clothing, his fingers in the folds of material with practiced precision; how hatefully he'd struck at Kizashi, pale face engorged in redness, brandishing his teeth with the menace of a hyena. For a moment, Paper Cut had seemed surprised, and he'd jumped back from Yukio with what was distinctly alarm.

Aizawa didn't happen to see anything after that, too focused had he been on snatching Rin away. Let Yukio have his way with Paper Cut – after all, it didn't seem there was much of a mind in the boy's head for Paper Cut to pick away at. Rin didn't need to be involved any longer.

But still she dug her booted feet into the ground, pulling against Aizawa and stopping them in their tracks. Jolting, of course, for it had taken all Aizawa's strength to be able to run like this. Now though, against such resistance, his limbs went dead and his head lolled heavily along his shoulders as he twisted himself to look back at Rin.

"Stop this," he said. "Yukio will be–"

As though possessed, Rin paid no attention to him whatsoever. Instead, she stared past him. Quiet, breathing hard, blinking against the obscurity as though it were the sun or a phantom. Turning back, Aizawa tried to pinpoint what it was that gripped her so – but all he saw was a large, emptied space opening up from the corridor.

* * *

_Cold. Everything is suddenly so cold, and the walls are too close, and your hand is too tight. Yukio still shouts behind us, but the sounds fade out in slow motion. You don't remember – I can see it in your face, how your features bend in struggling skepticism, how you lift your goggles as though in an attempt to get a better look._

_But please don't look too closely. I can still see tiny shadows huddled in the corners. The dogs still bark – and bark, and bark – chained right next to where we stand. And still the blood is on the floor. A colour I couldn't believe. Oozing. Oozing towards my feet. All of it unchanged. All of it crashing down against us with the force of collapsing stars. A look crosses your face – do you see it? Do you remember? You let go of my wrist. And suddenly the memories rise up through my throat in acidic burning. _

_It was here. _

_My stomach crumples, and it threatens to spill like a confession. _

_Your arms around me. Hand in my hair. Saying something – I can't hear you. You're not real. Only the white ghost of a child, stark against the crimson as she watches me, is real. The quivering downturn to her mouth. The blood across her face. How rapidly her brain spins and fingers burn and organs tumble as though being eaten alive. She watches me. I know those eyes – I know the guilt inside them. I don't deserve this. I don't and didn't deserve the safety of you. Not while Yukio screams in an agony I couldn't stop. Not while the blood spreads under my soles from a body I couldn't fix. _

* * *

"I'm sorry," Rin whispered, hands rising to clutch at Aizawa's scarf. She said it again, and the sound just barely met his ears. Far-off, speaking in jagged tones meant for somebody other than him. Listening, straining to hear her through the fog that continued to descend upon his senses. Aizawa held her more deeply against him, though he himself seemed to sink down down down, and offered no word of reply to the slow, slurred desperation of her words. "I didn't mean to. I'm sorry."

* * *

"_Let's go, Rin," you say. You say my name just like all those years ago. "There's nothing here." _

_But there is, all these unconfessable things. You see it, don't you? _

* * *

She didn't move, but between her words drew awful gasps as though bursting through water. Painfully aware of it as well as of how everything was suddenly plunged into silence – Yukio; a rising panic; where was Yukio? – Aizawa considered the space, finding a new and awful familiarity each time he glanced away from Rin. Its emptiness and expanse, hidden in the depths of the warehouse like a vault. Above them, it was possible to hear the pitter patter of birds, or rats, walking along unseen rafters. Around them, shadows seemed to move: hunched in corners, stretching out to meet them like hands gloved in black. Aizawa knew this place.

He couldn't call to mind its significance exactly, but it was not hard to picture. Had it been here? Here that he'd found her? Had it been in that corner or by that wall? What must it have felt like – like fate? Did planets collide and stars explode? In this dingy, rickety hole of a structure, could Aizawa, his younger self, possibly have imagined what sort of things were to come?

Into his neck, Rin murmured something. Footsteps were around the corner. They may have been out of sight but the safety was fleeting – or perhaps entirely an illusion, exposed as they were to the threat of the past. The sound drew closer, and as it did so Aizawa felt himself drop. Each footfall a new threat, inflicting greater waves of false sensation. From nowhere, Rin's hands were on his cheeks, and she was saying his name. Saying something. But the more she spoke, the closer everything came, and the more her face receded into the past.

Behind her, Paper Cut appeared once again. Cradled like a baby in his arms before being dropped in a heavy, fleshy thud to the ground was Yukio.

Aizawa's arms refused to hold Rin as he pleaded for them to. He could do nothing to stop her as she turned – and in doing so, she disappeared behind a thin curtain of mists and blurs. He heard her scream. He felt her vanish from him, surely towards the heap of Yukio's body as it bled out from the chest. Towards Paper Cut's feet, where that body now lay.

And just as the blood ran out from the fresh wound to Yukio's heart, so did the stabbing ache withdraw from Aizawa's skull. First with a sensation like his neck snapping. Then something much softer. Seeping. Ever out and down and up into numb, euphoric weightlessness.

The pain now lifted, images reeled through Aizawa's mind with the muted, colourless quality of film. The memories came back in a blurred distortion at first – after which the feelings came.

With all the horrifying, electrifying force of drowning beneath ocean waves, a colourful bombardment of _everything_ pummeled Aizawa's heart and lungs, and in a silent state of powerlessness he didn't notice himself sink to the floor. Sinking, as though all beneath his feet had slipped away. Sinking into the black recesses of what had been lost and now regained, deep and far gone enough for him to only hear Rin through an echoing distance as she cried and cried and cried.

He remembered.

Oh… He remembered.

How years ago, a little girl's eyes had shaken him to the very core in their pleading, desperate glow. He'd been here. Here, in this very place. And a man's body had been spread across the floor like a pig at a buffet table, blood seeping out his very pores – ears, eyes, mouth – in terrible glossiness. The other children far away and frightened. Police dogs yapping. And she, small and completely alone as she watched it, the corpse, as though it were a thing of terrible fascination and terror. Green eyes glazed. Hardly saying anything. And Aizawa, his younger self, had pretended not to notice the blood. He'd pretended not to be sick to the core with disgust and horror, keeping his eyes on her alone as he told her she was safe now. She was safe now.

He remembered the weighty immensity of her tiny hand as it clutched his. He remembered the alarm that had crossed her face when he handed her over to the ambulance: a face that had haunted him in all the hours that followed. _Please come with me, Eraser Head-san! __**Please**__! _And oh, how the much younger him had gone weak in the knees for this little girl. So many afternoons, he'd passed away hours in the children's hospital. Talking to her. Enchanted by her need for him: her excitement when he arrived and her innocent despondence whenever he left.

The feeling was delicious. Addictive. Molten gold over the blackening stains of guilt he'd felt for years before – the guilt and the inadequacy, the shock of Shirakumo's crushed face before Aizawa's waking sight and in all his nightmares. It all gave way to the searing, exquisite image of that little girl's relief when she'd taken his hand. How she'd looked at him as though he could do anything – and indeed, it made him feel like he could. Made him _want to do anything_. For her. All for her.

And then she, that marvelous little creature, was whisked away to Miyazaki to live with her grandparents. And the matter of the dead body (one of the traffickers, Aizawa had later discovered) was dismissed as an accident none of the doctors could explain. His bloodstream had turned against itself, flowing backwards and sideways, veins bursting. An accident. One not particularly undeserved, some might have said.

But Aizawa knew. He always knew, and for years after the fact, he carried Rin in his heart like a secret.


	44. The Game - Conclusion

Chapter 44  
The Game – Conclusion

Years later, that little girl had sunk into the recesses of Aizawa's inner world, little more than a splotchy abstract of green eyes and little, trembling hands. He'd remembered her name; he'd remembered the feeling, how good it had felt – no, not good, the way she'd looked at him was so much more than that. She stood in a stunning contrast against all the vile hopelessness of Shirakumo's death, pressing Aizawa onwards in knowing that he'd saved her, and she was safe, and if he could fix everything in the world just for that little girl's smile, he would. Even if that smile had become just too distant for him to reach.

But then!

But then she'd come back to him – all those years later, and there she'd been: insipid and peculiar and gazing at him with that cosmically familiar smile from the back of a classroom. Aizawa's first classroom. His first student, or one of the many, though none of the others had seemed quite so important as her. Her! Rin-chan!

Aizawa remembered the shock and bliss in such recognition, of feeling himself go frozen when his eyes fell over hers that first day of school. No longer that little girl bathed in blood and dirt, sickly in hospital sheets or bandages, but a strange teenager like some creature out from the depths of myth. And Aizawa remembered the sickness, the sheer torment that exploded all through him, when he first considered the possibility that she didn't remember him. That the quiet oddities in her smiles and stares had been emptied of him after so long – and indeed, he didn't venture to ask.

Aizawa remembered training – blood flowing from her forearms and shoulders as she manipulated it in crimson swirls outside her body. He'd pushed her. And pushed her and pushed her, knowing she could do so much more but knowing too that she was scared. After what had happened, ruby stains were blotched behind her eyes, and Aizawa saw how the stickiness of blood made her sick. Made her tremble. Made her fingers slip and cuts run too deep.

Every hospital visit – she pale and tired, he equally so as he waited for her. Waited in corridors. Waited just outside her hospital room's door, Recovery Girl always looking to him with a curious reassurance as though she knew how his own blood pounded through his ears. As though she knew. She knew.

Above everything, more than anything, he'd wanted to see her flourish, had wanted to see her safe.

And then, after it all, as though it all just hadn't been enough, she'd returned to him in her third year as she always did. Like the seasons. Like the snow and then the blossoms, a gust of wind through the classroom door. Only this time, the oxygen had dissipated from Aizawa's lungs in ways quite different to before. She came back from the holidays – from the excruciatingly long weeks away in Miyazaki – mortifyingly and unnecessarily beautiful like a butterfly having at last torn itself from its cocoon, and he somehow spiraled helplessly down into a new depth of feeling quite unlike anything he'd felt for her before.

It had revolted him, the way the boys in his class began to notice her.

It had shocked him that behind her back, he began to look at her in exactly the same way. By himself, he'd felt betrayed. By her new grace and competence, how suddenly she manipulated her quirk with the ease of water running and with the precision of striking serpents, Aizawa had been both thrilled and horrified. She didn't need him anymore. She wasn't a little girl anymore.

And then there was the UA Sports Festival. Never in his life had Aizawa been so excited and proud – willowy, distracted, delightful Rin as she knocked her opponent out the ring; talented, excitable, darling Rin as she grinned in disbelief at the fact of it before passing out in the middle of the stage from sheer overexcitement. Rush of blood to the head. Anemic exhaustion. And then in the backrooms before the prize giving – a darting ecstasy passed over Aizawa to see it now – he'd gone to her. She'd been pacing up and down, mumbling all sorts to no one but herself – and then she saw him, and had breezed over to meet him at the door.

And in a charmed moment, the two of them alone, she'd thrown her tulip-stem arms around his shoulders and rose up onto tip-toe to press her lips against his cheek. A long, soft, profound kiss. _Thank you! Thank you for everything, Aizawa-sensei! _

And Aizawa remembered that feeling. How he'd pushed her away gently to be faced with a sudden flush, a sudden fall to her features. He remembered the vague smell of sweat and the perfume she'd worn even back then; the chill of the backrooms; the crinkled, tight cling of her P.E. tracksuit. She'd told him sorry, the embarrassment suddenly dawning upon her. And he'd been too jolted to reply at first – by the ecstasy of the feeling, by the desire to pull her back into him and to kiss her properly because… _fuck_… he'd realised too late to stop it. It had taken every ounce of his strength to walk back out the door.

And by the impossibility of all the things he'd felt – their immense irrationality, how incredibly overwhelming and heartbreaking – Aizawa had been hopeless.

* * *

_He'd only just moved into the apartment a few weeks ago, and until now had been pleasantly uninterrupted by neighbours and the like. Boxes remained unpacked across the living room floor, piled and scattered in no particular order. He mainly slept on the couch nowadays, lacking in both the energy and desire to set up the bed, and had a grand total of three coffee mugs to his name. Apart from Yamada, who'd forced his way into the apartment the previous weekend for a casual and drunken 'housewarming party', Aizawa had had no visitors. He'd had none and indeed, he did not plan on making any changes to this fact. _

_As such, the sound of a knock at the door was unexpected and nauseating. Outside, the sky had blackened to a murky charcoal. Traffic on the street below was but a dull hum, lights in the other buildings steadily beginning their submission to the night's blackness. Yet, it was there: gentle and quiet enough for it to not have been real. Knock, knock. _

_Considering the possibility that he'd misheard – that perhaps the knocking was but an echo from someone else's door – Aizawa stayed on the couch, staring into the entranceway's shadows. Cup of coffee to his lips. Newspaper thrown dismissively across the floor before him. He narrowed his eyes, grunted in an unspoken attempt to will the intruder away. But the knocking came again. Two gentle taps. And then a breezy voice, chiming his name in a sweet questioning and making him almost choke upon his drink. "Aizawa-sensei? Aizawa-sensei, are you home?" _

_He bolted from the couch, nearly messing his coffee, and stumbled for the door. _

_She was there. Hiruma. Rin, whom Aizawa hadn't seen since her graduation three weeks before._

_A fog of yellow light from inside the apartment fell upon her as she blinked in disbelief at Aizawa – and to her, he must have looked to be in equal shock, for his limbs had begun a delicate tremble and his lungs had gone numb. She was in a pair of pajama shorts. She had her jersey on skew or even backwards (Aizawa couldn't tell, it was so massively large). _

"_Uh–" she smiled sheepishly, hands pulling and plucking at her sleeves. "Hi." _

"_Hiruma?" Somehow, the question of how she'd found where he lived did not so much as cross Aizawa's mind. Rather, heart floundering in anxious surprise, he was more fearful over the possibility of this being a dream. "What are you doing here?"_

"_I– Well, I don't know. I don't know. I guess I just… I didn't think you'd actually be home." _

"_It's very late." _

"_I'm sorry," she said. _

_After a long and dreadful silence in which neither of them moved, Aizawa's eyes heavy upon her and she not shying away, he stepped aside and told her to come in. The sound of it didn't reach his ears, intent as he was upon the lightness of Rin's step as she wandered past him – eying out the undomesticated mess without seeming to take much in, smiling small. Here, before him, she could not have been more than a specter. Since her class's graduation, Aizawa had agonized and brought himself close to the point of pain in resisting the urge to find her. To call her or write to her or damn well find her and tell her about the white hot irons that had stabbed at his chest over the last few months. Now here she was. Right here, and it felt so perfect and wrong. _

_He made them coffee – he knew, after one discussion in the teachers' lounge, how she liked it: Black. Three heaped teaspoons of instant. No sugar. _

_They sat awkwardly on the couch together, for it was the only seating Aizawa had. He wedged himself far into one corner, she stiff and quiet in the other. Her sneakers were at the door, and tapping her feet in rhythmless undulations against the floor, the pink stripes of her socks somehow seemed glaring. Grey pajama shorts, bandy legs more perfectly carved than ivory and scattered with scars from quirk training. Unbrushed hair. And the smell – god, the smell of her! Aizawa held his coffee close to his face, inhaling deeply and trying hard to think only of the burnt musk of caffeine._

_The small talk: brutal. The smolders of emotion which bristled in the space between them: wicked, the works of some mischievous god with a black mark against Aizawa's name. How cruel for her to come to him like this. How terribly cruel and unfair. _

"_Are things going well at the Voodoo Agency?"_

_It struck a nerve. Rin bit her lip. She'd told him before graduation about her fears and her nightmares, struggling for breath – and he'd held her hand, and told her in turn that nothing could hurt her so long as he was around. He remembered her. He remembered her. She remembered him too, and Aizawa couldn't help but to believe that she trusted he'd keep her safe once again. Perhaps that was why she'd taken the job in spite of it all. Perhaps that was why she was here now._

"_It's fine, I guess. Different to what I'd thought it would be." She looked away, to the floor, put her coffee cup on the table. And then, curiously flushed, she smiled at Aizawa. "But I've been… I mean, can I ask you something, Aizawa-sensei?" _

_Aizawa, through thoughtless slips of surrender, found himself inching closer. "Of course." _

"_Do you think it's too late for me to change my mind about being a hero?" A deep, profound gaze. "And if I did… Would you be disappointed?" _

"_No," he said quickly, and under Rin's surprised expression drew a breath to speak more calmly. "No, I wouldn't be disappointed." He put down his coffee cup next to hers. The space between them closed itself a little more. "But why are you asking? Has something happened?" _

"_I've just been thinking." _

"_Is that why you came here?" _

_It seemed she didn't know how to answer. Rin continued to look at him, suddenly quite somber, and Aizawa felt for a moment that perhaps the question was unfair, that really there could be no explaining why she'd come here, back to him, just as there could be no explaining why it made him tremble. They stared at each other, seemingly now unable to speak, sensing something carefully established begin to slip from them: a distorted protectiveness giving way to self-consciousness, and self-consciousness to adoration. _

"_I… don't know why I came," Rin repeated, face now deepened to the colour of blossoms, throat jumping sharply though she continued to smile. "There was something I wanted to say. I've wanted to tell you for a while."_

"_Yes?"_

_Hands tensing in her lap as she turned her face toward the floor. "Actually, you know, I should go~"_

"_No." Purposeful thought left him. Aizawa touched his hand precariously to her cheek: hot, smooth – guiding her to look at him more fully as stroked his thumb across her skin. "I'd like it if you'd stay." _

_Rin froze at the contact, but did nothing to pull away. Green eyes. Those same green eyes._

_She'd been his student not so long ago, and before that a child he'd cared a great deal for. But now the boundaries were falling away and there was no way out with words, risky, requiring a clarity of the heart terribly new to Aizawa. Composedly uncertain, he drew close, close enough to feel Rin's breath against his neck as she shuffled and stiffened next to him. The angling an awkward twist. Her own hand rising to touch his where it now rested along her jaw. Chaste, hardly with any real pressure at all, he grazed her lips with his own. They were soft; they were cold, tasting vaguely of salt; and a shudder reared itself through Aizawa's spine. _

_A quiet admission of guilt. This wasn't how it was supposed to be but Aizawa was not prepared to stop it. Not now. Too late, too far gone. The moment was quiet and perfectly still, but everything inside of him seemed to ache. For her and against her – Rin. For the way she sent a million pinpricks through his bones like dead stars flaring back to life._

_She drew away, though hardly so, her mouth still close enough to his own for him to taste her words. "This isn't– Doctor Voodoo–"_

"_Ssh." He pulled her closer. "Doctor Voodoo doesn't mean shit." _

_This time with uncertainty prickling out into a cocktail of relief and ecstasy, Aizawa kissed her again. This time, she sank into him with all the innocence of a flower in the rain._

_And just as quickly as it happened, it was over. And Rin left in silence, tying her shoes with trembling hands and walking fast from the door down the corridor. An odd slant to her shoulders. Not looking back at Aizawa, who watched her go, wishing as he'd never wished before that she'd come back and stay and be his. _

* * *

Memories blended into the near-past after that. The letter. The hospital. Somewhere between then and now, she'd ghosted herself from his mind without explanation. Maybe even for the best, because the image of her leaving through his apartment building, the weight of her lips from that night now burning upon Aizawa's like acid delicious and decaying – perhaps he wouldn't have survived, knowing then as he knew now how he'd fallen in love before he'd even had a chance to realise it was happening.

But now, it was all back. Back where it belonged, just as Aizawa was back in the warehouse with his back to the gritty ground and sobs ringing out between his ears. Somehow, it all seemed even more dreamlike. Just as, if not more unreal than all the things that had come to pass. But– fuck–

_Fuck_.

It was real. All of it.

Unable to repress a moan, Aizawa rolled onto his side and propped himself up.

Rin was slumped on her knees, Yukio limp in her arms though one hand was up against her cheek. Full of red splatters. Ungodly smallness. He was alive, though just barely, and Rin's palm was spread across the blanket of blood that knitted itself out from Yukio's chest. Her face swollen, her face pink and shimmering. Blood had pooled alongside Yukio's shoulders, but seemed to ooze inwards rather than out. Indeed, as Aizawa stared hard through the sickly mist across his vision, the blood disappeared. Crawling, seeping, up and up back into the wound as though the whole scene were playing out in reverse.

"I didn't want to hurt you," Aizawa heard Yukio say in a weak, tiny voice. "I didn't know."

"It's fine," Rin said, steady and hard in spite of the tears that erupted along her cheeks. "Just don't speak."

"It hurts."

"I know."

"I love you, Rin-chan."

"Don't say it like that. You're going to be fine."

Paper Cut was right there, watching. Just watching, with a fucking smirk across his face. Aizawa forced his hands beneath his shoulders, struggling against the invisible weight laid upon his back as he pushed himself up. Feebly, of course, and without much success, for as soon as he managed to lift his torso from the ground a firing pain through his neck sent him limply back down. And Paper Cut laughed, and Rin's eyes shot up towards him.

Throwing his hands out in a mock show of greeting, Paper Cut cried with exaggerated pleasure, "Finally, you're awake, sensei. I was getting bored." _Crack_. Hateful, with the slicing poise of a snake and much too fast for Rin to react, Paper Cut's boot met her side. Aizawa flinched as though the pain were his own. Rin crumpled next to Yukio, gasping against wet sounding coughs.

"You get finished up with Yukio quickly now, Rin, my sweet," Paper Cut said, kicking her hard in the other side of her ribcage before stepping over her crinkled frame and towards Aizawa. "Because Eraser Head here's going to be losing a lot more than just some blood."

Move! Aizawa screamed within himself to move!

Paper Cut waved his fingers in the smooth twist of snakes, and pieces from his sleeve tore to wrap around his fingertips like talons. He grinned, brandishing the teeth too white for a smoker and the bloodthirsty intention too shining for someone once a hero. Aizawa clenched his own hands into his fists, willing, begging, pleading for his arms just to _move_ and for his eyes to just stopping shutting against the pressure like stars exploding through his skull.

Just barely, Aizawa heard Rin hiss, "Fuck you, Kizashi."

"Oh?" Paper Cut grunted, turning. "Want to say that–"

He didn't finish. A shock bolted down Aizawa's spine. She was too fast and then she was frozen, her hand around the handle of another blade from the soft folds of her costume. It was buried into Paper Cut's hip, and around it a soaking redness spread across his costume's pristine, perfect whiteness. Paper Cut stared at her, mouth hanging in a soundless scream before being concealed by the palm of Rin's free hand like a mask. She held him there. Held him as though she planned to crush his skull. Glared at him with the whites of her eyes having blackened once again to unholy darkness.

It seemed almost possible to hear the thud of Paper Cut's heart. _Thump-thump. Thump-thump_. Unnatural and nauseating, though perhaps Aizawa was listening simply to his own pulse as it hiked and fell in terrible undulations at the sight of Rin's… hate. Indeed, she was capable of hatred. Aizawa had forgotten that until now. And it sent a wintry chill through Aizawa's bones.

"I'll kill you," Rin said, truthfully. More truthfully than Aizawa had heard any person speak before. "If you touch him, I will kill you."

"Like you killed that man?" Paper Cut spat, muffled behind Rin's hand. "_Please_. You won't do that."

But then he shuddered like a puppet being shaken, and with nightmarish glossiness a perfect trail of blood ran out from his ear down his jaw.

Just as quickly, his body went still again. He drew a breath, an awful gasp sounding like an injured dog's, and Rin continued to glare. Face steely and beautiful, hand dead set against Paper Cut in a clawed, certain loathing – as though to say _try me_. Could she feel how Aizawa trembled? How he marveled and at the same time collapsed in upon himself – this wasn't her. Was it? It wasn't.

"God, Rin," Paper Cut moaned, and the ecstasy of the sound made Aizawa certain he'd be sick. Also that he'd kill Paper Cut himself if ever he manage to move. "You're just like your mother."

Everything went still. Though Rin's palm remained secured, her despising resolve seemed to waver. Ghoulish eyes widening, she spluttered, "Excuse me?"

"Your mother, Rin," Paper Cut wheezed. "She was always so difficult about everything. No matter how many drugs I got into her system, she always managed to hide you so fucking well. The one time I did manage to find you, she _also_ threatened to kill me." Rin's hand fell away, and Paper Cut cocked his head. He wasn't smiling. Blood was gushing from his nose as though he'd taken a hard punch. "Doctor Voodoo told me it wouldn't be necessary to get rid of her – much as she may have deserved it. She was a fucking whore and a liar. Sound familiar Rin? I wasn't supposed to tell you. Doctor Voodoo was going to tell you himself when the time was right. He didn't want to kill her but he was willing to do it for you…"

"Stop."

"It's true."

Rin shook her head. Aizawa felt himself do the same. "No."

"Yes. She died because of the secrets she kept. Just like Yukio is going to die, and just like your precious Eraser Head is going to die because of _your _secrets."

"No!" Rin threw her hand back in a jolting contortion, and Paper Cut coughed out a black spew of blood.

In perfect unison like a horrific choir, both of them screamed and twisted. Both of them dropped to the floor with fleshy, heavy thuds, and Aizawa watched stunned. The two of them, Rin and Paper Cut, writhed. She clutched at her chest – Aizawa was struck by a nightmarish dread that her wound had torn open and that her heart would fall out from her body. Paper Cut clawed at his cheeks and mouth in the manic way of rabid beasts.

From across the space, Aizawa felt a pair of eyes on him. He met Yukio's gaze, the boy's own pale face having dropped into an awful, pleading look which made Aizawa's heart plunge.

"Oh golly, Kizashi. That was the one thing I asked you not to say." That voice. Aizawa knew that voice. Warm and hypnotic, a smile sown into it like a devil's sick of sin. He screwed his head upon his shoulders – and there, there in the place from which they'd all come, was the rap of a cane against the floor. The swish of a purple coat against fiendishly pale skin. Doctor Voodoo, swaying casually upon the scene as though Paper Cut and Rin did not coil themselves into nightmarish shapes of pain.

Three little dolls were cradled in his arm, the size of newborn babies and just as disconcerting.

Fuck no.

Please no.

One doll's hair hung in silken, fairytale stands of white – and in its chest, little gemstone flecks of red around it, was a needle. The other doll wore a suit, lovingly knitted, quite like Paper Cut's – and its raggedy face, where its jaw would have been, was ripped off and leaking out fluffy tufts of crimson. And the third doll remained untouched, swathed in black with a scarf wrapped around its neck.

Doctor Voodoo stopped right by Aizawa, for a moment looking down at him with that nauseating, infuriating grin. "Children can be so disobedient, can't they, Eraser Head?" And with the tip of his cane, he tapped Aizawa's temple teasingly. "I don't know how you've coped with my Rin for so long. She's certainly a handful."

"Go to Hell."

Heartily, Voodoo chuckled. "I'm afraid the Devil wouldn't like the competition."

Paper Cut gasped again, hands around his face in quivering desperation. "Doctor Voodoo! Oh, Voodoo I'm so sorry! I got carried away!"

"That you did." With his thumb and index finger, Voodoo flicked the one doll's forehead, and Paper Cut fell backwards as though he'd been shot through the head. "A pity. You were doing such a good job. But I'm here now." Forgetting about Aizawa entirely, Doctor Voodoo began a casual wander towards Rin as she continued to clutch at her chest. Aizawa tried to scream – indeed, the sound began to escape from his lungs, but before anything coherent could leave him he saw Voodoo's produce another needle. And then he was blinded. Blinded by white hot agony in his groin which shot and screeched through his limbs.

No blood. No broken bones or sprains or anything real at all. Only the torture of ruthless, pointless pain.

Doctor Voodoo bent down towards Rin. From the other end of the room, Yukio started yelling again in the high-pitched, tormented whines of an injured animal. "No! No! Leave her alone! Monster! Monster!"

But nothing seemed to reach Voodoo. He crouched down, placing his cane alongside himself, and with his free hand stroked Rin's hair. "Hello, my dearest. My darling. I've missed you so much."

Like a viper – and shit, did it make Aizawa proud – Rin's head shot upwards and she spat into Doctor Voodoo's face. Just as swiftly, he slapped her. Hard. The sharp sound carrying between the walls and making Yukio roll into the fetal position, wailing. Sickly, Doctor Voodoo guffawed, and he gripped a handful of Rin's hair to bring her to look him in the eyes.

"You must have a lot of questions. I know, I know, don't look at me like that, with those big lovely eyes ~ such an ugly face doesn't suit you. Come on, my dearest, show me your biggest smile."

Something was off. Aizawa stared hard, trying to figure it out – he only saw them in profile, Doctor Voodoo's face close to Rin's, and he only saw them through the airheaded daze of aching.

"You…" Rin breathed, the sound of it breaking Aizawa's heart. "My mother."

"It had to be done," Doctor Voodoo said, releasing his hold on Rin's hair and lovingly, mockingly, began to line the three dolls up on the floor before her. "She'd never let me have you. I knew you'd be able to do great things – I could give you so much. But she called me mad. Can you believe that Rin?" Ironically, he cackled. "She thought I was mad even though she never saw what sort of potential was swelling in her womb."

With a long, swollen finger, he pressed down into the Kizashi-doll's stomach, and across the floor Paper Cut spilled his guts in a sour pooling of vomit.

Surprisingly, Rin threw out her hand and cried Paper Cut's name. His real name, with none of the hatred of before.

As she did so, Voodoo gripped Aizawa's doll's arm between his fingers. He screwed it effortlessly into an unnatural angle – and Aizawa imagined splintering bones in fire, and bit down hard into his lip to stop the scream rearing itself from the depths of his gut. He was going to black out. His head seemed to disconnect from his body and then come crashing back.

"Stop it!" Rin screeched.

"Then listen like a good girl. I have to leave soon and I only have time to tell you this once."

Aizawa couldn't see. To listen took every ounce of strength he could manage – to listen to Yukio screech and throw himself about helplessly, to listen to Kizashi groan and sob, to listen to Voodoo as his sickening baritone so familiar and so demonic spouted words that Aizawa, after everything, couldn't even convince himself were lies. No matter how he felt Rin's heart break – for indeed, he felt it in his own chest, he felt her soul drain out from her body alongside his and into nothing – he couldn't convince himself or her.

"I knew you'd be wonderful. After all, we have the very same eyes, don't we? Yes, Rin, look at me. I know you've been denying it. But it's true. Your mother lied to you, and you've lied to yourself, but you're mine. You've always been mine and I'll make sure you stay mine. No one else's." In a silhouette of sudden light and blackness, Aizawa shuddered at the sight of Voodoo leaning forward to plant kisses along Rin's face. He rasped – _no, stop _– but no sound other than a bloody desperation came out. _No one else's. Only mine. _

Things went black again. Black for a long time or no time at all.

There were sirens squealing in the distance. Everything around him broke away, sending vibrations through his body like millions of crawling ants. Aizawa felt himself float up from the floor and down again and up again, as though upon an expanse of endless sea. He felt the soft gracing of Rin's lips upon his. He lifted his arms and held her though she wasn't there. Rin. Doctor Voodoo – no, stop. Leave her alone. Yukio crying. Kizashi silent.

And explosions. Explosions? Footsteps? Barks like dogs.

"Hands up! Get those dolls away from him! I said hands up!"

Knowing that his eyes flitted open but seeing nothing, only the high greyness of roof and concrete, Aizawa waited. More explosions, and voices blurring together in his ears in a distorted song of nausea and disorientation. _What a shit-show! _Yamada? _Fuck off, you creepy little shit! _Bakugo? Bakugo? Why?

There were hands on Aizawa's face. Light in his eyes. What?

And then, like the devil himself, there came the composed, tea-time sound of Nezu as he said gently but with a dreadful loudness that pierced between Aizawa's ears, "Hello Doctor Voodoo." Drunken fantasy. Drugged out nightmare. "I've been waiting rather a long time for this."

* * *

**A/N: One chapter left...**


	45. Fate

Chapter 45  
Fate

Like sunlight through a pond, pools of dull colour swirled in the blackness behind Aizawa's lids. He rasped. A shudder travelled through him, down every inch of flesh and muscle he could still feel. Limbs disconnected, strange figments lolling about his insides.

He was floating somewhere, up into bright light with swaddling clouds of cottony white falling about him. He wasn't in pain but he dared not move, rested as there was a weighty numbness about his forehead and temples, between which a quiet _throb – throb – throb _swam back and forth. Floating into cold sunlight. His eyes cracked open, a slither of slicing intensity across his pupils, and he became aware for the first time of a lackluster beeping. A mechanical whirring. The sting of vile stiffness down his arms and back.

Every inch of him felt sensitive and full, swelling at the seams. Aizawa imagined inky purple darkness up and out along his skin, as though he'd been thrown piece by piece down a cliff face, collecting bruising jewels on his way down. Down, down, down.

Thirst drowned him, his throat somehow sticky and charred.

His eyes opened more fully against the light. There was around him a clinical walling of pastels and plainness, his own body before him covered in a thin sheet of white. Was this the morgue? Was he dead, his ghost now looking upon himself?

A needle was in the back of his hand.

The beeping continued.

"Ah, Eraser Head – awake at last," a voice said, and feebly, appalled by his own slowness, Aizawa screwed his head to the side. A pillow beneath him. A table of blurry objects upon which he couldn't quite focus. And there, on a high stool next to him, Nezu smiled thinly.

"_Awake_?" Aizawa repeated, though the word came out scratchy and distorted.

"How are you feeling?"

"Thirsty."

"Here." Taking from the side table a full glass, Nezu handed it to Aizawa.

His arm lifted with painful effort, fingers seemingly hesitating to wrap around the glass, and when at last he managed to drink it was silk down his throat. Pouring through his chest and lungs in stale, perfect coolness. He gasped and gently thrust the glass back towards Nezu, a quiet plead for more. A plead to which the principal obliged meekly, refilling the glass from a dispenser on the other end of the room and returning to his seat. Staring down as Aizawa drank, saying nothing and smiling that same, loaded smile.

With a labored sigh, Aizawa dropped his hand and the glass to his side. Head back on the pillow, closing his eyes as though to sleep – yes, sleep seemed a marvelous idea – he hummed in response to Nezu's slow, careful questions.

"Are you in any pain, Eraser Head?" _Mmm_. "Shall I call a nurse?" _Mmm-mmm_. "Do you remember everything?"

"M–" What was everything? What more was there to remember? The soundless images of crinkling bodies and Yukio's mouth split wide in dogged cries; blood and bones that cracked without cracking. And Doctor Voodoo, face a fleeting horror in the dark recesses, his eyes staring down Aizawa's throat into his beating heart – how had no one ever noticed? The greens. The greens of his eyes, glowing and lecherous and mythical in their depth. "Of course I _fucking remember_," Aizawa spat, rather too quietly for his taste. "Where is he?"

Placing his paws together in his lap, nodding unaffectedly in the face of Aizawa's rising ire, Nezu said, "In Tartarus." A thoughtful, though unwelcoming pause. "Since the arrest, overwhelming evidence has begun to flood–"

"I meant Yukio," Aizawa demanded. At that moment, the thought of Doctor Voodoo was rather too much for him. "Where is Yukio?"

And with a sudden, shocking wave of sympathy – making his mousey features drop into a soft, sad mask – Nezu sighed. Aizawa's heart plunged. "He passed away two nights ago."

It shot through him worse than any bullet. He didn't know why, but a carnal pain reared itself in his chest, his gut.

"Hiruma-chan was able to prevent the majority of the damage from his wound. Blood loss and the like," Nezu said, muted. "But I don't think that poor child had any will left to live. His heart simply stopped beating. Though if I might say, it's better this way. For him as well as for our investigation, callous though it may seem – it appears the effects of his quirk were cancelled out. Many witnesses have been coming forward with new–"

Aizawa's heart seemed to cave in on itself. Yukio was dead, and without explanation a hole seemed to open itself up. Glaring and Yukio-shaped. He hadn't even felt much more than disdain for Yukio, and whether by guilt or by being desperately overcome with unwieldy emotion, Aizawa was struck hard by the urge to cry. "Was Rin with him?" he questioned in something of a gasp. Breathless. Reeling. "With Yukio, when he died?"

Nezu nodded again. "Until the very last moment."

"Rin–"

"She was discharged yesterday."

Discharged. The word was hung with weighty implication, like rotting grapes upon a vine as they dropped blackened and sweet. Aizawa blinked once, twice again, waiting for more though sensing a dire finality in the words. She was gone – she hadn't come to see him – she'd been discharged from the hospital, the prison, the morgue in which Aizawa now lay and he wanted to see her but she wouldn't come. Perhaps Nezu saw it, the pale melancholy as it crossed Aizawa's face in miniscule twitches and drops, for he smiled and sighed once again.

Black eyes shining, full of higher knowing, his paws remained clasped in his lap as he leaned forward upon the chair. In a calm, tiresome voice – ever pacifying and now more than ever making Aizawa's teeth grate – he spoke affectionately, "There's something I'd like you to know, Eraser Head, now that all of this over." Something inside of Aizawa unfurled itself under the weight of Nezu's gaze: a sleeping knowledge suddenly waking, a premonition previously ignored now announcing itself loud and unbearable. Since forever, he'd known what was coming, yet to hear it was ripping. "I was the one who told Hiruma-chan to have your memories taken away."

Aizawa understood but could say nothing. Rin had left him for this. After they'd kissed that first night in his apartment, after everything, she'd fled from his mind and heart still without an explanation in her own words. And now here was Nezu, soft-spoken as though this were not a knifing betrayal.

Heedless of the way Aizawa glared, the principal continued, "Do you remember I told you Voodoo and I played chess back in the days?"

Aizawa said nothing.

"Well, since Hiruma-chan started at UA, we've been playing an even bigger game. And she was my most powerful piece," Nezu said, and there was a wavering irony. "You see Eraser Head, I've always had my suspicions about Voodoo, but have never been able to make any conclusive moves against him. Because of his connections. Because of how easily he slips from sight. But when I discovered his interest in Hiruma-chan – quite momentous, really, since he has never paid much attention to the students at our school – I seized the opportunity."

Were it not for the numbing weakness down his spine, Aizawa's hands would have been around the rodent's neck, silencing him. How dare he speak like this? Of Rin as a _piece_. An _opportunity. _

Was he himself simply that to Nezu? _A piece_?

"I trained her for this very specific purpose, knowing that only she would be able to slip into Voodoo's trust. Psychology, manipulation, the works," Nezu said simply. "I never told her my intentions until she came to me one night saying she didn't want to be a hero anymore. That there was something she wanted much more…"

Had it been for that that she'd come? That night in his apartment, her lips against his and her eyes all dewy with a confused cocktail of emotion. For this? For him, from the very start?

Nezu's smile widened. "You loved her. I only realised it then – indeed, you did a fine job of hiding it, Eraser Head. But you loved her and it would have jeopardized everything. So I gave her the choice." He held out a paw as though to balance the immensity of the revelation in his palm. "I _did _give her a choice," he repeated. "Either she could help me uncover Doctor Voodoo's secrets – because only she was in a position to do so – and potentially bring an end to a large ring of criminal activity. But she would be alone. And before now, only her and I and the Chief of Police have known about this mission. To have involved anyone else would have been… too much of a risk." He paused, letting it all sink in.

"Or," Nezu held out his other paw, "she could love you in return. Love you freely, though knowing Doctor Voodoo is not a man to simply let things go. He'd put too much work into her to allow her to simply slip away." Dropping his paws, shaking his head in an attempt to look regretful, Nezu said, "She chose the first. And she realised the need to let you go."

"You used her," Aizawa hissed, all the venom rising out from the depths of his soul. "You used her _and _now you've used me."

Nezu nodded. "I did use her. But I didn't count on you coming back into her life so soon."

"People fucking died."

Ears pricking upwards, Nezu smiled. "Yes. People did die, but no one was killed."

Aizawa stared at him, confused and angry. More riddles.

"Paper Cut was taken into custody and questioned, and after many stolen memories of his own were returned, he confessed to many things. The three from the agency Hiruma-chan involved in the investigation, for example, were Doctor Voodoo's suicide bombers, intended to make her think she was responsible for unnecessary deaths." Cocking his head, looking smug. "It seems Voodoo found out about our operation some months ago and has been making preparations. Not to escape. He knew he'd been caught. But instead to make Hiruma-chan suffer. The way he has gone after you. Yukio's death. It has had nothing to do with anyone but Hiruma-chan."

"So all this time–"

"It's been a game. And Doctor Voodoo is rather an unwilling loser, though he knows when he's been beat."

Unsteadily, Aizawa pushed himself up to sit, to come eye-to-eye with Nezu. To stare daggers into him on a more equal footing.

"The only reason it's gone on so long," Nezu said, "was because we were working our hardest to get Voodoo out in the open. Not Yukio. Not Paper Cut. _Him_. And I needed the right bait for that. I needed you."

"So Rin lured me to the warehouse."

"I told her to. That day at the Culture Festival. I explained my strategy but she refused." His ears pricked happily once again. "I suppose that's why she left you then."

To remember it, how his heart had splintered into shards about his ribcage, brought a sour burn to Aizawa's gut. "But – she left her phone. I got phone calls–"

Nezu made a tutting sound. "Believe it or not, Eraser Head, that was probably an accident. Intelligent as she is, Hiruma-chan is butter-fingered and careless. Many times I've had to clean up certain trails she's left behind… Really, it's a miracle she wasn't found out sooner."

Looking down to his hands, one of them bandaged up from a wound he didn't remember receiving, Aizawa spoke more now to himself than to any other listener, "And the letter."

"Bakugo opened it and brought it to me first."

"That fucking–" Aizawa's head shot upwards, sending a plastering pain down his spine though through his disgust he was able to ignore it. "You brought my student to the warehouse! _He _could have been killed… Do you understand what sort of trouble that would cause for the school? After everything!"

"I'm afraid there was no talking the boy out of it. He's very attached to Hiruma-chan and was very insistent on joining myself and the other teachers in the raid. We got hold of the police immediately. It all happened much faster than you might believe."

Indeed, it all crashed down in violent blurs. Words. Explanations. Sounds that meant everything but which Aizawa simply couldn't string together in his mind. He felt his neck go limp beneath the weight of his skull, and he sagged forwards upon the bed in a dejected, overwhelmed slouch. Exhaustion came like a smoke. It hit him with the force of tumbling waves. More questions seemed superfluous, knowing as Aizawa did that no more answers would reach him in any comprehensible form. He thought again of Doctor Voodoo, the eyes he should have recognised. He thought again of Yukio, and of Paper Cut. And of Rin. All of this – could all of this really have been because of her?

"But…" Aizawa breathed, something of a stammer resounding in his pulse. "Why?" Why, what? What logic, what clues was he looking for? There'd be no making sense of it. Maybe in some days, maybe after weeks or years. But now nothing could reach him. Still, he repeated it, and elicited a surprised shuffle from Nezu, "But why would he do all of this to his daughter?"

Silent for a moment, Nezu pulled something from the side table. Through a daze, Aizawa noticed the papery curve, the heft of documents. Gently, two folders were placed in his lap, and with a faraway, underwater quality he heard Nezu say, "There is no reason other than that he can."

Two names. Two photos, each one stamped with the miserably familiar symbol of Child Welfare. The first, _Mujitsu Yukio_. The second, _Hikisaku Kizashi_, a little face too familiar for Aizawa to look at it in all its childish, long-gone misery. Swollen eyes. Split lip. Like a disease, Aizawa pushed both the folders away. He didn't need to read to know what Nezu was trying to say. Rin wasn't the only one. She wasn't the only one caught up in this.

"Where–"

"Back at her apartment," Nezu declared, jumping from his stool and making to leave.

* * *

After four glasses of wine, her head was spinning, and it was as though the floor fell out beneath her feet when she rose from the couch. Rin was only vaguely aware of the knocking at the door, caught up as she was in the stifled sound of sobs as she swallowed them down with the acidic fruitiness of her merlot's aftertaste. With the sleeve of her jersey, she scrubbed at the wetness across her cheeks. Wishing away whoever was outside and half-damning them because for fuck's sake, she wanted to die. She wanted to lie down on her couch's faded material, and curl up into a ball as pathetic as she felt, and disappear entirely.

The knocking grew more insistent, a violent throb like wood being chopped. Muffled by the dizzy pressure between the walls of her skull. She had her hand upon the doorknob before she realised she'd moved her arm, but instead of opening she simply stood there, her forehead against the wood and her eyes falling heavily towards the floor. Go away. She was too drunk. She was too tired. Her face burned and her hair was oily around her scalp, like a gross slick of neglect.

It was over, but god did she feel so much worse than ever before. Everything pulling down on her, clutching at her innards and soul the way Yukio had clutched her hand.

He had looked at her so softly. No matter how many times she'd told him she was sorry, he had smiled up at her with that skew, sharp-toothed smile – _It's fine now, Rin-chan. I'm going to go now_ – and then he'd slipped out from her grasp like night faded into sunrise. Quietly, sighing. Features pastel with relief. And Rin wished she could do everything differently. She wished someone better could have protected him – because she had tried and failed, had tried ever since she was a little girl to keep him safe just as she'd been kept safe by love and heroes. But no. She didn't know what it was to be safe, not really, and Yukio should have been allowed to die a lot sooner and in much gentler arms than he had.

She heard her name. Her heart skidded up into her throat and she was sure she'd be sick. Harsh reverberations of his fist against the door. "Rin, please let me in."

Outside, it was frozen and dark, stars hanging glittery and still in the blackness. And Shouta was there. And he was swaying before Rin's vision, though perhaps that was her own fault, the fault of the wine's. Eyes encircled by tired shadows. The cuts across his cheeks had scabbed and bruised. He looked down at her, hard and ruffled and everything she'd ever wanted, and Rin – looking up at him and refusing to look away because every night she'd dreamed of him and it had torn her heart to shreds to find it hadn't been real – found her lungs floundering for air.

"You were discharged," Shouta said, the sound of it dry and painful.

The sensation in Rin's own throat was sharp. "So were you."

"No. Not really. The nurse's don't know I'm gone."

"What?"

"I'm coming in."

He pressed past, only the slightest graze of his arm against hers, and Rin shuddered. For what seemed an age, she stared at the place he'd stood while listening to his boots drop behind her, to his socked feet tapping through her apartment in heavy, uncertain steps. Could he have been here, truly? Or was this some sort of wine-drunk dream into which she'd stumbled? Wonderful and awful, with all the vivid lucidity of reality to make it all the worse.

She turned, heart trembling with the threat of escape from her ribcage, and watched Shouta lift the bottle of merlot from the dining table to throw down what remained inside of it. He pulled a face, crinkles in his brow and nose, and pressed his fingers to his eyes. "That's disgusting," he muttered. "Do you have more?"

With a sudden, shocking clarity of mind, Rin did her best to walk straight. Into the kitchen, feeling Shouta's eyes in the back of her neck – she was too cowardly to return his gaze, but too weak to resist several desperate glances in his direction as she poured more wine. Two glasses: one fresh from the cupboard, the other stained from several days of over exertion. Leaving the hospital, she'd bought four bottles of red and some packets of rice cakes. This would be the last wine. She had perhaps three rice cakes left, but no appetite for anything more.

They drank in the kitchen, under dull light and silence. Shouta swallowed gulps at a time, saying nothing but watching Rin over the rim of his glass; she sipped more hesitantly, willing herself to sober up but at the same time begging to be more drunk. It would be easier to take whatever Shouta had to say if she was in a daze; she'd be able to accept his hatred if she had the numb slackness of liquid courage.

At last, wiping the final traces of alcohol from his lips with the back of his hand, Shouta set the wine glass aside and met Rin's eye without barriers. "Why didn't you come?" he questioned blandly, though Rin knew the question was anything but bland. "In the hospital. You never came to see me."

Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. "I thought you probably wouldn't want me to." More quietly, she added, "Ever."

"Nezu told me everything."

She wanted to tell him she was sorry – but the syllables now seemed tasteless and wasted upon her tongue, after all the times they'd already been spilled. She wanted to tell him how much she wished she'd been the one to say everything that until now had gone unsaid – but she'd had plenty of opportunity and it had been her choice to shut up.

"Is it true?"

He already knew the answer. But still, with uncomfortable quickness, Rin replied, "Yes."

Things fell into a hush once again, poignant and pregnant. Rin twisted herself against the kitchen counter, and breathed in a considerable flow of her wine. It lingered in her throat. She wondered how possible it would be for her to drown herself on alcohol.

Shouta said her name, followed by incoherent syllables, but through a sudden surge of some wicked hopelessness, Rin cut in sharply, "You don't have to say anything."

Then _that _look crossed his eyes, and it jolted Rin as though she'd seen her reflection move of its own volition. He looked at her like he was looking at stars die, or like he was listening to a beautiful, sad song. "I want to say something," he said, resolute and quiet. "And I want you to say things in return. Real things, because now this is over and it will all be very different from now on."

It didn't make much sense, dipped in the nonsensical filter of shallow intoxication. Still, sensing she was obligated to be obliging while also realising her heart's own weakness – indeed, it had things to say, and after all this time, it seemed there was no harm in loosening the restraints (or rather, there was no point in staying quiet any longer) – Rin nodded, clasping her wine glass like a lifeline between her hands and waiting, waiting for Shouta to speak.

He sighed. "I'm sorry about Yukio. But you don't have to say anything to that. What I want to know is if Nezu told you to keep my memories a secret even after we… were together. Again."

"No," Rin said, trembling, clawing through the fugue over her own thoughts to remember things clearly. "He didn't really tell me to do anything. I – I just – there were so many reasons I didn't want you to remember even though if you had it would all have been… I don't know… a lot simpler I guess. But I was–"

"Scared?"

Rin nodded feebly.

"Because you thought I'd see you differently?"

Looking down at her glass, swirling the sliver of wine remaining, Rin felt a whimper begin to sew itself in her throat. Yes. She'd been scared he'd see her differently – because she had bad blood inside her veins, the blood of a monster. And she'd tried to bleed it out. She'd only guessed at it years after the fact. She'd only seen her face in _his_ eyes and had been overwhelmed by the sneaking foreboding. It was true now, written out in DNA tests and a doctor's signature of confirmation, but even if it had only been a guess back then Rin had wanted to hide herself and Shouta from such an unfair, terrible truth.

Shouta pushed his glass along the counter behind him. "Did it also have anything to do with what happened between us that night you came to my apartment? After your graduation, I mean, when we–"

"Yes," Rin murmured. "It also had to do with that."

It struck her heart to see such a pained expression cross his features usually so composed and cool. "Why?"

"Shouta," his name flowed like honey from her lips, and it drained her greatly not to throw her head into his chest. "Every single day since then, I've regretted not choosing you." Rin's chest cracked. The hills and crevices of her heart began to squeeze themselves out. "But whatever happened between us back then was… it wasn't healthy. Every single thing I did revolved around _you_. I didn't care about becoming a hero. Ever since I was little I just wanted to be _with you _in some form or another because I couldn't imagine ever being whole without you. And I think you felt the it's not up to us to make each other whole."

He said nothing, but paid her all the world's attention.

Rin felt her finger press into her lip, and she bit down. She didn't quite get the thrill of the pain, not consciously at least, but the pressure of what it should have been was disarming. She dropped her finger with agonizing slowness, her teeth having left fine indentations in its tip, and allowed her mouth to curl unhappily. "I wanted to start again," she said. "Things were different, or are different, and I thought we had a chance to be something. But I wanted to do it right. Without such a mess of feelings."

"And Paper Cut?"

"What about him?"

"Did you love him?"

The seventeen year old somewhere within Rin's greatest depths squirmed. And cried. And cried and cried. "I think I thought I did." One last sip from her glass, to make it bearable, though like a ghost from her teenage mistakes, the sour burn seemed more of smoke than of grapes quashed into wine. She imagined goosebumps over all the places Kizashi's hands had stroked and smacked and scratched. She recalled the sear of his cigarettes into her side, and of how he'd whispered her name with all the apple-sweet temptation of serpents. "We were both fucked up inside. And I think we'd convinced ourselves that we needed each other. I made him feel better, and he–"

Shouta's eyes were narrowed. "But you didn't love him."

"No."

"Do you love me?"

The question wasn't fair. Not nearly so simple. But Rin had thought about it many times. Many times since she was a little girl. She set aside her own wine glass, suddenly defenseless without anything for her hands to hold. "Yes," she said, as honest as she could ever be. "I do."

Beneath the ragged sag of his clothing, Shouta's body almost deflated, as though Rin's answer were a puncturing needle into the stiff tension through his limbs. He gazed at her, sizing up every small twitch of her features, and she let him though the alcohol burned in her cheeks and salt seared her eyes. Beneath her, her legs were quivering, and like sand she was about to crumble. Shouta was saying nothing, and perhaps that was the end. Maybe now he would leave satisfied into the night, and she'd be left quite deservingly alone.

But no! What was this?

Before Rin could realise, his arms were around her. Her face in his shoulder – and oh, that warm, musky smell – and his hands against her gently – and the scratch of his stubble, coarse and wonderful, against her cheek. She could feel his heartbeat, and in the touch of his lips to her ear, innocent and quiet, the world and Heaven and Hell collided in shattering, gorgeous brightness. "Tell me again," he said. "Tell me you love me." And suddenly, as implosions of feeling melted out like gold, there seemed nothing in the world left to say.


	46. Epilogue

**A/N: And you all thought I'd leave you hanging… ;)**

Epilogue

A year down the line, nighttime images still came back to haunt him. Indiscriminate splatters of red; an illusionary pain along his limbs like barbed wire, coiling and scraping through a splintering pattern of veins. Memories or distortions of them, hazy tricks by a derivative author, it was hard to say – but on those nights, nights like tonight, Aizawa woke panting with sweat needling at his forehead. The echo of dogged cries only beginning to fade some seconds after opening his eyes; his heart continuing to cower in relentless throbs. _Ba-bump. Ba-bump_.

If it wasn't late night patrols keeping him awake, it was nightmares.

And there was no point staying in bed, where beneath him the mattress lay soaked and above him the sheets were in a disaster of twisting discomfort. He threw them aside, heard the cat whine unhappily from its curled up position along his legs – a mismatched set of eyes gazed at him sleepily through the dimness, one blue, silvery in its sparkle, the other green and glowing mossy. Slit pupils. An expectant, accusing _meow_.

Affectionately, Aizawa scooped the cat in his arms and stood. Relieved by the fuzzy warmth – the heavy, restless beat of a feline heart beneath it – he nuzzled the snowy white fur, scratched the spot behind the ears. This was Yuki, whose sleep schedule had aligned itself uncannily with Aizawa's: she closed her eyes when he closed his, purred with equal timing as he breathed. If he slept on the couch, so did she; if he slept standing, so would she. And whenever Aizawa woke, wandering lethargically to the kitchen for coffee, she would patter along beside him like a slinky, white shadow. Most of the time demanding to be held – _meow, meow, meow _– by head-butting Aizawa's ankles and flicking her tail against his calves.

She was quiet now though, only a gentle rumble escaping her chest as Aizawa cradled her against his body. He carried her to the kitchen, where there was upon the air the lingering smell of last night's curry – garlic and green peppers, chili, a certain smokiness – as well as a pair of unwashed wine glasses on the counter. Full fridge of groceries. An open recipe book – _Iron-Rich Recipes For Two. _

Aizawa continued to hold Yuki fast against him while the kettle boiled, pressing his face against her fur and on occasion tapping her little pink nose, bouncing like bubblegum, with his finger.

Outside, there was snow on the windowsill, the pale red glow of Christmas lights from the neighbours' windows. A tight darkness. A lonely normality under the gaze of starlight.

A slice of such darkness came slinking into the kitchen after Aizawa, fluid across the floor and seating itself at Aizawa's socked feet just as the kettle reached boiling point. He looked down, saying nothing, and looking up at him in turn were eyes spookily golden against their body's sleek blackness. Tail whipping across the floor with restless energy, Blink (or Blink Junior, or Blink II, it remained roughly undecided) mewed with disinterest like a yawn before resuming his casual sway across the kitchen.

Blink, unlike Yuki, refused to sleep, instead disappearing through windows and down corridors at all sorts of unholy hours, or otherwise marching up and down the apartment somberly. No one was ever quite sure where he went or what he, in all his stereotypical black-cat aloofness, got up to. And unlike Yuki, Blink Junior only seemed to tolerate Aizawa when being given tuna from the can – for indeed, he was a mommy's boy through and through, and would only stomach being in Aizawa's presence if his other, more adored owner was around.

Around as she was now, tip-toeing into the kitchen quietly. Draped completely in Aizawa's clothes, a sagging rumple of black tracksuit pants and a turtleneck sweater that hung stretched and ragged around her neck. White hair mussed in all directions, feet bare against the kitchen's icy tiles. "Ever the early riser~" Rin cooed, leaning against the doorway and smiling dazedly at Aizawa. "Bad dream again?"

Aizawa hummed, stroking Yuki's neck with his thumb in an attempt to stop her fresh bout of struggling. She too, tended to prefer Rin's affections when given the option. "Did I wake you?"

"I planned on getting up early. I still need to finish my reports."

"You should stop leaving things until the last minute."

Rin pouted playfully, sleepily, and came closer. She held out her arms as though to take a newborn, and with childish eagerness Yuki slipped herself from Aizawa's hold into Rin's.

Though only having just woken up, no shadows hung beneath Rin's eyes like half-moon bruises anymore. There was a fresh colour to her cheeks nowadays, a glow no longer so insipid as it was blossomy, and in a shocking contrast to a year ago, Rin hadn't eaten a rice cake in months. Most people who saw her – her grandparents, on their frequent trips to Musutafu, included – attributed this new lightness and glow to the fruitful pleasures of domesticity. And Rin would shrug daintily, and within himself Aizawa would half agree, though he thought it more to do with the fact that Rin had quit hero work like a poison being detoxed from her body.

The closest she came to participating in anything of the sort nowadays was her Criminal Psychology class and guidance counselling at UA. Apart from that though, she had another full-time job in planning her and Aizawa's wedding – initially a small event, hardly bigger than a court wedding, but thanks to Yamada and Kayama's interference now turning into something rather more… extroverted.

A kiss on the perfect whiteness of Yuki's forehead. The sound of ankles clicking as Rin bent and released their cat onto the chilled floor. Blink came rushing, clearly imagining it his turn to be picked up, and then looked up at Rin with dismay when she straightened herself without taking him into her embrace.

"I'm making coffee," Aizawa said, hiding his amusement.

In turn, Rin swaddled his neck with her arms and pressed herself into him – the smell of bedsheets and enduring dews of perfume, her lips close to his – either oblivious to or ignoring the way Blink and Yuki began to wander aimlessly between her legs. "Come back to bed."

Raising his eyebrow at her, lips pricking upwards into a smirk, Aizawa pressed his hands to her cheeks. "Don't you have reports to do?"

"Yes," she groaned. "But the idea of going back to sleep is too distracting… I need to get it out my system before I can be productive."

"You're such a child."

"Yet you're marrying me."

"It's only rational." Dropping his hand to take hers, running his thumb over the metallic rim of the engagement ring he'd given her, Aizawa brought Rin's fingers up to his lips and kissed them. Several, light-lipped kisses bouncing from one knuckle to the next, and then into the underside of her wrist. Over the soft, vulnerable flesh. Over the scars he knew like the night sky knew the stars – and while he kissed them, adoring and tiredly gentle, he and Rin began to sway side to side. Slow. Quiet and lethargic, quite like the way one felt themselves being lulled into sleep.

Yuki sprinted with spontaneous energy out the kitchen after some invisible tyrant. Blink meowed unhappily – once, twice again – before resignedly following his sister out into the apartment's darkness.

And under the yellow glow of the kitchen light, letting the water in the kettle go cold, Rin and Shouta melted tenderly into a slow dance without music. Her face leaned into his shoulder, hair tumbling in all sorts of waves and curls against his neck and chest. He with his arm curving gently around her waist and his eyes falling closed.

He'd spend the rest of his life like this: awake in lightless hours with her in his arms, the promise of forever stretched out before them in the dull, quiet light of their home. Cats scattering about the floors excitedly. The ever unmade bed calling to them with its still-warm sheets and comfort.

He'd waited for what seemed an entire lifetime – and indeed,_ he'd spend the rest of his life like this_.

* * *

**THE END**


End file.
